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bashshellsed

How can I strip first X characters from string using sed?

I am writing shell script for embedded Linux in a small industrial box. I have a variable containing the text pid: 1234 and I want to strip first X characters from the line, so only 1234 stays. I have more variables I need to "clean", so I need to cut away X first characters and ${string:5} doesn't work for some reason in my system.

The only thing the box seems to have is sed.

I am trying to make the following to work:

result=$(echo "$pid" | sed 's/^.\{4\}//g')

Any ideas?

Solution

  • This will do the job too:

    echo "$pid"|awk '{print $2}'