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extracting substrings from variables

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# 1  
Old 05-27-2011
extracting substrings from variables
Hello Everyone,

I am looking for a way to extract substrings to local variables. Here is the format of the string variable i am using :

/var/x/www && /usr/x/share/doc && /etc/x/logs

where the substrings i must extract are the "/var/x/www" and such.
I was originally thinking of using something like "awk" to extract each substring and place them in $1, $2.....$NF which would be perfect.
Does anyone have an idea?

Thanks a lot for your replies
# 2  
Old 05-27-2011
try this

Code:
echo $string||awk 'BEGIN{FS="[&][&]"}{for(i=1;i<=NF;i++){print $i}}'

# 3  
Old 05-27-2011
Code:
[ctsgnb@shell ~]$ set -- $(echo '/var/x/www && /usr/x/share/doc && /etc/x/logs' | sed 's/ &&//g')
[ctsgnb@shell ~]$ echo $1
/var/x/www
[ctsgnb@shell ~]$ echo $2
/usr/x/share/doc
[ctsgnb@shell ~]$ echo $3
/etc/x/logs
[ctsgnb@shell ~]$

# 4  
Old 05-27-2011
Hi,

Thank you for your lightning quick reply !! Smilie

I have typed a test script that goes like this :
Code:
#!/bin/bash


var='/var/x/www &&  /usr/x/share/doc &&  /etc/x/logs'

echo $var||awk 'BEGIN{FS="[&][&]"}{for(i=1;i<=NF;i++){print $i}}'

just to test you solution, yet the return is this :
Code:
/var/x/www && /usr/x/share/doc && /etc/x/logs

it seems like the awk does not recognise the && separation
Last edited by Franklin52; 05-27-2011 at 01:50 PM.. Reason: Please use code tags
# 5  
Old 05-27-2011
use "nawk" or "/usr/xpg4/bin/awk" (the POSIX one) instead of the simple "awk" if you are running on SunOS/Solaris plateform

---------- Post updated at 11:03 AM ---------- Previous update was at 11:00 AM ----------

By the way, by using the && as field separator you may get unexpected heading and/or trailing space
# 6  
Old 05-27-2011
thanks for the tipSmilie but i use RedHat platform. here is the shell version :

GNU bash, version 3.1.17(1)-release (x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu)
# 7  
Old 05-27-2011
remove the double pipe between echo and awk. Use only one pipe, it worked on removing it, though strange.
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