Manipulating the output string in bash shell

Question

I have written a line that finds and returns the full path to a desired file. The output is as follows:

/home/ke/Desktop/b/o/r/files.txt:am.torrent
/home/ke/Desktop/y/u/n/u/s/files.txt:asd.torrent

I have to modify the output like this:

bor
yunus

How do I do that?

Thanks in advance.

piokuc · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-03 19:58:52Z

1

This should work for you:

your_script.sh | sed 's,.*Desktop,,' | sed 's,[^/]*$,,' | sed s,/,,g

or, even better:

your_script.sh | sed 's,.*Desktop,,;s,[^/]*$,,;s,/,,g'

edited May 3, 2013 at 19:58

answered May 3, 2013 at 17:48

piokuc

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3 Comments

This isn't my real name Over a year ago

Three instances of sed? Don't you think that's overkill?

piokuc Over a year ago

No, I don't think it's an overkill, it will work fast. But yes, it can be done in one invocation of sed as well.

Gordon Davisson Over a year ago

You can run multiple sed commands in a single instance by separating the commands with ;, like this: sed -e 's,.*Desktop,,; s,[^/]*$,,; s,/,,g'

This isn't my real name · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-03 17:49:01Z

0

With sed. echo '/home/ke/Desktop/b/o/r/files.txt:am.torrent' | sed -e 's+/++g' -e 's/^.*Desktop//' -e 's/files.txt:.*$//'. This is a fairly trivial solution, and I'm sure there are better ones.

answered May 3, 2013 at 17:49

This isn't my real name

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Comments

Fredrik Pihl · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-03 18:10:35Z

0

Id resort to awk:

BEGIN { FS="/" }

{
  for(i=1;i<NF;i++)
    if (length($i) == 1)
      a[NR]=a[NR]""$i
}
END {
  for (i in a)
    print a[i]
}

use it like this:

$ awk -f script.awk input
bor
yunus

or if you have your data in a variable:

$ awk -f script.awk <<< $data

edited May 3, 2013 at 18:10

answered May 3, 2013 at 17:56

Fredrik Pihl

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4 Comments

This isn't my real name Over a year ago

But what if the input line is /home/q/Desktop/b/o/r/files.txt:am.torrent?

Fredrik Pihl Over a year ago

well, yes that is a problem since you'd get qbor but that format wasn't given in OPs tetstdata. I'll wait with a complete general solution until OP request such...

This isn't my real name Over a year ago

But the possibility was implied. /home/ke/Desktop suggests that he's scanning user homedirs. It isn't usual, but there's nothing forbidding a single-character username.

Fredrik Pihl Over a year ago

if it's the users home-dir thats an issue then simply change the for-loop to for(i=4;i<NF;i++) instead. Until OP states differently I'll stick to KISS.

abasu · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-03 18:17:39Z

0

it's not a nice/tidy solution, but bash parameter expansion is a powerful tool. So could not resist providing an example

[]l="/home/ke/Desktop/b/o/r/files.txt:am.torrent"
[]m=${l##*Desktop/}
[]n=${m%%/files.txt*}
[]k=${n//\//}
[]echo $m
b/o/r/files.txt:am.torrent
[]echo $n
b/o/r
[]echo $k
bor

You can see how nicely bash is replacing the variable step by step without using any external program (btw [] is PS1, prompt) There can be many more ways to do it. I got another one while writing the first

[]l="/home/ke/Desktop/b/o/r/files.txt:am.torrent"
[]m=${l/*Desktop\//}
[]n=${m/\/files.txt*/}
[]k=${n//\//}
[]echo $m
b/o/r/files.txt:am.torrent
[]echo $n
b/o/r
[]echo $k
bor

Try some more,

answered May 3, 2013 at 18:17

abasu

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1 Comment

abasu Over a year ago

Sorry lost track of the original question, you can read line by line in a while to use this

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