Posts tagged substring in bash

Look at the following snippet to understand how to extract specified number of characters from a given offset in a string.

[neo@techpulp ~]# cat substr.sh
#!/bin/bash
str="this is a mysubstring test"
subs=${str:10:11}
echo Length of string is ${#str}
echo Sub string starting at offset 10 and len 11 is \"$subs\"
[neo@techpulp ~]#

Here is the output of the above script.

[neo@techpulp ~]# sh substr.sh
Length of string is 26
Sub string starting at offset 10 and len 11 is "mysubstring"
[neo@techpulp ~]#

Now let us implement a generic function substring:

[neo@techpulp ~]# cat sstr.sh
#!/bin/bash
# Usage: substring <string> <offset> <length>
function substring()
{
  local More >