UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Dear Members,

For example i have a file which contains 10 lines as below:

123testing
gopjp
jg9459\
834789rh
fh456
47rf
497rvg
409748\
08ntr

i need the first three characters of the first line of the file.

if i use

Code:

cut -c 1-3 < sample.txt

its displaying the 1st three characters of all the lines. I just need the first three characters of the first line of a file. How can we do this?


Thanks

You can try the head command.

Code:

head -1 filename | cut blah blah

Code:

head -c3 infile

??

Nice solution if you don't care about a carriage return in the output.

Examples:

Code:

head -1 urllist.txt | cut -c 1-3
htt
root@www:/tmp#

Code:

root@www:/tmp# head -c3 urllist.txt
httroot@www:/tmp#

Indeed but it would be usable like this:

Code:

var=$(head -c3 infile)

Code:

read -n3 < infile
echo $REPLY
123

Works nicely in bash/ksh (though not in sh/zsh)