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Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting How to replace all but the first 3 characters with sed? Post 302934639 by sea on Monday 9th of February 2015 02:28:56 PM
Old 02-09-2015
Not as nice, but might be easier to maintain:
Code:
while read line
do
	len=${#line}
	[ $len -gt 3 ] && len=$(( $len - 3))
	tmp="$(printf '%*s' $len|sed s,\ ,*,g)"
	echo "${line:0:3}${tmp}"
done<file1

Code:
$ cat file1
abababab
cdcdcdcdcd
efefefefe
a*bcdef

$ bash leolson
aba*****
cdc*******
efe******
a*b****

hth

Last edited by sea; 02-09-2015 at 04:23 PM.. Reason: typo, thx scrutinizer
 

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buffer_get(3)						     Library Functions Manual						     buffer_get(3)

NAME
buffer_get - read binary data from buffer SYNTAX
#include <buffer.h> ssize_t buffer_get(buffer* b,char* x,size_t len); DESCRIPTION
Normally buffer_get copies data to x[0], x[1], ..., x[len-1] from the beginning of a string stored in preallocated space; removes these len bytes from the string; and returns len. If, however, the string has fewer than len (but more than 0) bytes, buffer_get copies only that many bytes, and returns that number. If the string is empty, buffer_get first uses a read operation to feed data into the string. The read operation may indicate end of input, in which case buffer_get returns 0; or a read error, in which case buffer_get returns -1, setting errno approporiately. The preallocated space and the read operation are specified by b. You must initialize b using buffer_init before calling buffer_get (or use the pre-initialized buffer_0). SEE ALSO
buffer_init(3), buffer_feed(3), buffer_peek(3), buffer_seek(3), buffer(3) buffer_get(3)
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