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Remove/replace the very first character/symbol match

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# 1  
Old 07-24-2014
Remove/replace the very first character/symbol match
Code:
cat file.txt
file 1123.x July 23:222 /cd/hh2/k39/ss2/f7d8d9d8e6r5t4s/dd2/e/s7a/s7a2afa5017d8b975-1.7-1395610245-b22e19bbc477b134

i wish to only extract out the 1.7 (anything within the first - -)
i try to look for the sed command under match the first occurence of pattern but out of luck, my output result always match under last of - (before b22) and have everything removed.
# 2  
Old 07-24-2014
This should be what you want:

Code:
sed 's/^\([^-]*\)-[^-]*-/\1--/' file.txt

^ beginning of line
\([^-]*\) any number of non-hyphen chars saved as \1
- hyphen
[^-] any number of non-hyphen chars (this is your 1.7 STRING)
- hypen
This User Gave Thanks to Chubler_XL For This Post:
ctphua
# 3  
Old 07-24-2014
thanks.
but i think my explanation was wrong in the first place,
actually i wanted to output only 1.7 (remove everything but 1.7)
# 4  
Old 07-24-2014
This is what you want then.

Code:
sed -e 's/^[^-]*-//' -e 's/-.*//' file.txt

This User Gave Thanks to Chubler_XL For This Post:
ctphua
# 5  
Old 07-24-2014
i try to do some modification on top of your first solution. it worked but i will keep improving on that.
thanks
Code:
echo "file 1123.x July 23:222 /cd/hh2/k39/ss2/f7d8d9d8e6r5t4s/dd2/e/s7a/s7a2afa5017d8b975-1.7-1395610245-b22e19bbc477b134" | sed 's/^\([^-]*\)-\([^-]*\)-/\2--/' | sed 's/\-.*$//'

# 6  
Old 07-24-2014
Yes you've got the hang of it. I took an easier way out and just deleted everything up to the first hyphen and then everything from the last hyphen to the end of the string, leaving the data you wanted.

Also note how you can use two (or more) -e commands on the one sed command line, this is more efficient as the sed executable only needs to be loaded by the shell once.
This User Gave Thanks to Chubler_XL For This Post:
ctphua
# 7  
Old 07-24-2014
very informative. i will keep improving on sed skill. thanks for motivating me up with the solution.
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