UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hello all,

I'm trying to grep a file for a particular line and character position number and place the contents into a variable that I will examine later.

The file should have the data I want in the 20th line and the 18th position on that line thru the 26th position on that line.

I've used grep in scripting before, but only to verify the existance of a certain string in a certain file...never to find a changing string and read it into a variable.

I've spent the last few hours googling this, but I'm afraid I'm too new to make sense of the results.

Can anyone help?

Thanks so much.

Code:

sed -n '20p' input_file | cut -c18-26

Ahhh, sed. Shows how much of a newb I am. wrong tool for the job.

Thank you!

Code:

var=$(sed -n '20{s/^.\{17\}//;s/\(.\{9\}\).*/\1/p;q;}' file)