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Extract substring of unknown length from string

 
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# 1  
Old 01-31-2009
PHP Extract substring of unknown length from string
I have a string:

Code:
hgLogOutput=" +0000 files: forum/web/hook-test.txt /forum/web/hook-test-2.txt description: test"

and I want to extract the file names from it, they will always appear between the files: and the description:. I have worked out that I can do this:

Code:
"$hgLogOutput" | awk '{ print index($0, "files: ") }'

to print the location of the start of files: to the console but I can't assign that to a variable. If I could I think I could use something like:

Code:
fileStrings=${hgLogOutput:$startIndex:$endIndex-$startIndex}
echo $fileStrings

Can anyone assist? I have been hunting around on how to do this for a couple of hours and my eyes are now bleeding.
Last edited by klogger; 01-31-2009 at 10:04 AM..
# 2  
Old 01-31-2009
Do you want the filenames as a string value?
Something like this:
Code:
% hgLogOutput=" +0000 files: forum/web/hook-test.txt /forum/web/hook-test-2.txt description: test"
% f="${hgLogOutput#*files: }" f="${f% description*}"                                              
% printf "%s\n" "$f"                                                                              
forum/web/hook-test.txt /forum/web/hook-test-2.txt

# 3  
Old 01-31-2009
Thanks radoulov, that is exactly what I was after.
 
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