UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

Hi,

We have few hundered scripts using cut command in thousands of lines. On HP-UX shell script developer used

Code:

echo "ABCEFG" | cut -c -1-3

to cut first three character of the string. We recently moved to Linux and this command throws error. I think this might be due to different version of cut binary. Is there an easy way to get around with this issue. Changing in all scripts is too risky thing to do.



Best Regards,

I think you'll have to change something in all scripts, no matter what.
Personally, I'd go with option a.

A variant of (c) - add a shell script "cut" to some DIR and add this DIR to PATH before running your scripts.
This script may look like this (assuming your args do not have spaces):

Code:

#!/bin/sh

for arg; do
  case "$arg" in
    -c) shift;;
    -[0-9]*) nums="$arg"; shift;;
    *) args="$args $arg"; shift;;
  esac
done

nums=`echo $nums | sed 's/^-/-c/'`

/usr/bin/cut $nums $args

Many Many thanks it worked.