UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I have a list of files with names as "FULL_abcd_xyz_timestamp.txt" and "FULL_xx_abcd_xyz_timestamp.txt". I am writing a script with a 'for loop' to take each file, strip the "FULL" and "timestamp" from the file name and do some actions on the contains of the file. So I need to know the number of "_" in each file name obtained as $file (for file in `ls *.txt`) so that I can cut 2-3 or 2-4 fields accordingly using- "echo $file | cut -f 2-3 -d "_""

Code:

n_fields=`echo $var|tr _ "\n"|wc -l`
n=$[ $n_fields - 1 ]

This works in bash or ksh

Code:

$ str="FULL_abcd_xyz_timestamp.txt"
$ str=${str//[^_]}
$ n=${#str)
$ print $n
3

Or:

Code:

number=$(echo $var|awk -F_ '{print NF-1}')

Regards

Thanks a million folks.