How can I extract a substring after a certain string in ksh?

Question

If I have a string like this:

The important variable=123 the rest is not important.

I want to extract the "123" part in ksh.

So far I have tried:

print awk ' {substr($line, 20) }' | read TEMP_VALUE

(This 20 part is just temporary, until I work out how to extract the start position of a string.)

But this just prints awk ' {substr($line, 20) }' | read TEMP_VALUE (though this format does work with code like this: print ${line} | awk '{print $1}' | read SINGLE_FILE).

Am I missing a simple command to do this (that is in other languages)?

Running Solaris 10.

Answer 1

Your command is failing for multiple reasons: you need something like

TEMP_VALUE=$(print "$line" | awk '...')

You can use ksh parameter expansion though:

line="The important variable=123 the rest is not important."
tmp=${line#*=}   # strip off the stuff up to and including the equal sign
num=${tmp%% *}   # strip off a space and all following the first space
print $num       # ==> 123

Look for "parameter substitution" in the ksh man page.