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using awk to omit certain characters

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# 1  
Old 08-26-2010
using awk to omit certain characters
I have a file called file.txt with multiple lines in them. I'm trying to remove the first 2 characters and the last 2 with awk.

Code:
'.batman')
'.superman')
'.dragonheart')
.'superduper')

I tried doing the following and able to get rid of the first two characters. How do I remove the trailing characters?
Code:
cat file.txt | awk ' {print substr($0,3)}'

# 2  
Old 08-26-2010
Code:
awk '{print substr($0, 3, length-4)}'

Code:
sed 's/^..//; s/..$//'

# 3  
Old 08-26-2010
Thanks! that worked great. Do you mind explaining how does the length option work?
# 4  
Old 08-26-2010
substr takes input arguments as start point and number of char to print.
Length option will give u the length of the whole string. Now in the awk statement the number of char is given by length-4 , i.e. for the string '.batman') total length is 10 so awk will print from 3rd char till 9. Correct me if i am wrong. (alister )
# 5  
Old 08-26-2010
Code:
sed 's/^..\(.*\)..$/\1/' urfile

# 6  
Old 08-26-2010
I think this would suffice in this case given sed's greediness Smilie
Code:
sed 's/..\(.*\)../\1/' infile

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