Remove certain no. of characters before and after each line in a TXT file with bash or python

Question

I was wondering if there is a way to remove desired no. of characters before and after each line in a text file using bash or python

I am trying to remove first 5 characters and last 2 characters in each line in this case

file.txt

(2, 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_(sociolinguistics)')
(3, 'https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/register')

desired_file.txt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_(sociolinguistics)
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/register

I've tried to look for similar questions unfortunately none of'em worked for me

Answer 1

Can try this code. It seems like a simple fix but I wouldn't recommend this since it restricts how you parse.

input_file = "input.txt"
output_file = "output.txt"

with open(input_file, "r") as infile, open(output_file, "w") as outfile:
    for line in infile:
        trimmed_line = line[5:-3]
        outfile.write(trimmed_line + "\n")

Instead I would recommend your code be based on the word http and end with ') As per the code below:

input_file = "input.txt"
output_file_1 = 'output1.txt'

with open(input_file, "r") as infile, open(output_file_1, "w") as outfile1:
    for line in infile:
        start_index = line.find("http")
        end_index = line.rfind("')")
        trimmed_line = line[start_index:end_index]
        outfile1.write(trimmed_line + "\n")