What I am doing is searching for any 2 characters (the .. does this in sed) with the third character a . (need to do \. in sed so it knows I want the period), and deletes those three if they exist.

Code:

> echo "john:F.:doe:email2@email.com"
john:F.:doe:email2@email.com
> echo "john:F.:doe:email2@email.com" | sed "s/..\.//g"
john:doe:email2@emacom

Now, your data is clean without the initial.

Note... as I think about this, the following might be better as it seaches for : then any character than period:

Code:

> echo "john:F.:doe:email2@email.com" | sed "s/:.\.//g"
john:doe:email2@email.com