Shell Programming and Scripting

I have a list of servers that I need my script to ping however this list also has the env they belong too such as SIT, PRD, warehouse and so on.
The break character for each section is :
A value in my list would look like this...

Code:

brutus.grhq.xxx.com:warehouse

Where brutus.grhq.gfs.com is the server that the following code needs to ping. I am trying to figure out how to say....

Code:

/lcl/tools/bin/sshPing.pl $remote_server > /dev/null

But drop the :warehouse part. So another words I am trying to figure out how to say sshPing.pl brutus.grhq.gfs.com and drop the :warehouse.
I thought you could do something like |cut -f 1 -d: however I do not see how I could use that in that line of code to break up the string.
Any ideas? Really lost on this one.Thanks.

use Parameter Expansion

Code:

echo "brutus.grhq.xxx.com:warehouse" | sed 's/:.*//'

Any examples of how I might do that?
I do not see much for examples on Google.

Code:

var='brutus.grhq.xxx.com:warehouse'
remoteserver=${var%:*}

Well the problem is I do not really need to echo it. I just need to use the string.

I tried....

Code:

/lcl/tools/bin/sshPing.pl $remote_server | sed 's/:.*//' > /dev/null

But that did not work.

---------- Post updated at 07:43 AM ---------- Previous update was at 07:40 AM ----------

Also tried...

Code:

/lcl/tools/bin/sshPing.pl ${remote_server%:*} > /dev/null

But I got... bad substitution

---------- Post updated at 07:47 AM ---------- Previous update was at 07:43 AM ----------

Also tried...

Code:

var=$remote_server
remote=${var%:*}
/lcl/tools/bin/sshPing.pl $remote > /dev/null

But I still get an error of bad sub.

---------- Post updated at 07:55 AM ---------- Previous update was at 07:47 AM ----------

Tried this as well....

Code:

/lcl/tools/bin/sshPing.pl $remote_server sed 's/:.*//' > /dev/null

Any ideas? Thanks

Suppose you have the list of remote servers in a file:

Code:

while read var
do
  remote=${var%:*}
  /lcl/tools/bin/sshPing.pl $remote > /dev/null
done < file