[Wylug-help] Shell scripting

[Geoff Richards]

On Sun, May 09, 2004 at 10:23:34PM +0100, Nick Jeffery wrote:
> Hullo,
>
> I've a variable (from cat'ing a file) in a bash shell script.  I'd
> like to get only the first 32 characters of the file/variable on their
> own..
>
> I've tried:
>
> foo=`echo ${bar:32}`  but that doesn't seem to want to play ball.
>
> Anyone got an idea?  Don't want to use regexps/perl/awk if at all
> possible.

How about this:

   foo=`echo "$bar" | head --bytes=32`


--

--- Geoff Richards -------------><-------------- http://ungwe.org/ ---
"I tried to fling my shadow at the moon,
 The while my blood leapt with a wordless song."  --  Theodore Roethke