Shell Programming and Scripting

echo ${myarray[j]}
mytitle=`awk '{print substr(${myarray[j]}, 0, length(${myarray[j]})-4)}' /dev/null`

awk: line 1: syntax error at or near {
awk: line 1: syntax error at or near ,
awk: line 1: syntax error at or near )
awk: line 1: extra ')'

mytitle=$( awk -v ARR="${myarray[j]}" 'BEGIN { print substr(ARR,1,length(ARR)-4) }'  )

var=foo
awk -v myvar=$var '{.....}' somefile

${string:position:length}

a=123456789
len=${#a}   # length of the variable
len=$(( $len -1 4 ))
echo ${a:0:len}   # get string minus 4 characters

var=123456789
newvar=$(echo "$s" | awk  '{print substr($0,1,length($0)-4) }')