Shell Programming and Scripting

cat $TSMINCLUDE | while read c
do
 l=${#c}
  if [[ $l == "6" ]]; then
     long=$((l-5))
  else
     long=$((l-6))
  fi
 fs=`echo $c | awk '{s=substr($1,1,$long); print s }'`
 echo $c ... $fs

#!/bin/ksh
while read c
do
 l=${#c}
  if [ "${l}" -eq 6 ]; then
     long=$((l-5))
  else
     long=$((l-6))
  fi
 fs=`echo $c | awk '{s=substr($1,1,awkLong); print s }' awkLong="${long}"`
 echo $c ... $fs
done < "${TSMINCLUDE}"

#!/bin/ksh
cat $TSMINCLUDE | while read c
do
  len=${#c}
  if [ "$len" = "6" ] ; then
    # you can use builtin, no need to execute subprocess
     ((long=len-5))
  else
     ((long=len-6))
  fi
  # and builtin substring works fine with ksh93 and bash (1st index is 0)
  fs=${c:0:$long}
  echo "$c ... $fs"
done

a="12345"
echo ${a:2:2}  # echo 34 or error