Extract substring in Bash

You can use Parameter Expansion to do this.

If a is constant, the following parameter expansion performs substring extraction:

b=${a:12:5}

where 12 is the offset (zero-based) and 5 is the length

If the underscores around the digits are the only ones in the input, you can strip off the prefix and suffix (respectively) in two steps:

tmp=${a#*_}   # remove prefix ending in "_"
b=${tmp%_*}   # remove suffix starting with "_"

If there are other underscores, it's probably feasible anyway, albeit more tricky. If anyone knows how to perform both expansions in a single expression, I'd like to know too.

Both solutions presented are pure bash, with no process spawning involved, hence very fast.

Use cut:

echo 'someletters_12345_moreleters.ext' | cut -d'_' -f 2

More generic:

INPUT='someletters_12345_moreleters.ext'
SUBSTRING=$(echo $INPUT| cut -d'_' -f 2)
echo $SUBSTRING

Generic solution where the number can be anywhere in the filename, using the first of such sequences:

number=$(echo $filename | egrep -o '[[:digit:]]{5}' | head -n1)

Another solution to extract exactly a part of a variable:

number=${filename:offset:length}

If your filename always have the format stuff_digits_... you can use awk:

number=$(echo $filename | awk -F _ '{ print $2 }')

Yet another solution to remove everything except digits, use

number=$(echo $filename | tr -cd '[[:digit:]]')

Here's how i'd do it:

FN=someletters_12345_moreleters.ext
[[ ${FN} =~ _([[:digit:]]{5})_ ]] && NUM=${BASH_REMATCH[1]}

Explanation:

Bash-specific:

• [[ ]] indicates a conditional expression
• =~ indicates the condition is a regular expression
• && chains the commands if the prior command was successful

Regular Expressions (RE): _([[:digit:]]{5})_

• _ are literals to demarcate/anchor matching boundaries for the string being matched
• () create a capture group
• [[:digit:]] is a character class, i think it speaks for itself
• {5} means exactly five of the prior character, class (as in this example), or group must match

In english, you can think of it behaving like this: the FN string is iterated character by character until we see an _ at which point the capture group is opened and we attempt to match five digits. If that matching is successful to this point, the capture group saves the five digits traversed. If the next character is an _, the condition is successful, the capture group is made available in BASH_REMATCH, and the next NUM= statement can execute. If any part of the matching fails, saved details are disposed of and character by character processing continues after the _. e.g. if FN where _1 _12 _123 _1234 _12345_, there would be four false starts before it found a match.

Building on jor's answer (which doesn't work for me):

substring=$(expr "$filename" : '.*_\([^_]*\)_.*')

Without any sub-processes you can:

shopt -s extglob
front=${input%%_+([a-zA-Z]).*}
digits=${front##+([a-zA-Z])_}

A very small variant of this will also work in ksh93.

I love sed's capability to deal with regex groups:

> var="someletters_12345_moreletters.ext"
> digits=$( echo "$var" | sed "s/.*_\([0-9]\+\).*/\1/p" -n )
> echo $digits
12345

A slightly more general option would be not to assume that you have an underscore _ marking the start of your digits sequence, hence for instance stripping off all non-numbers you get before your sequence: s/[^0-9]\+\([0-9]\+\).*/\1/p.

> man sed | grep s/regexp/replacement -A 2
s/regexp/replacement/
    Attempt to match regexp against the pattern space.  If successful, replace that portion matched with replacement.  The replacement may contain the special  character  &  to
    refer to that portion of the pattern space which matched, and the special escapes \1 through \9 to refer to the corresponding matching sub-expressions in the regexp.

More on this, in case you're not too confident with regexps:

• s is for _s_ubstitute
• [0-9]+ matches 1+ digits
• \1 links to the group n.1 of the regex output (group 0 is the whole match, group 1 is the match within parentheses in this case)
• p flag is for _p_rinting

All escapes \ are there to make sed's regexp processing work.

shell cut - print specific range of characters or given part from a string

#method1) using bash

 str=2020-08-08T07:40:00.000Z
 echo ${str:11:8}

#method2) using cut

 str=2020-08-08T07:40:00.000Z
 cut -c12-19 <<< $str

#method3) when working with awk

 str=2020-08-08T07:40:00.000Z
 awk '{time=gensub(/.{11}(.{8}).*/,"\\1","g",$1); print time}' <<< $str

May be this could help you to get desired output

Code :

your_number=$(echo "someletters_12345_moreleters.ext" | grep -E -o '[0-9]{5}')
echo $your_number

Output :

12345

There's also the bash builtin 'expr' command:

INPUT="someletters_12345_moreleters.ext"  
SUBSTRING=`expr match "$INPUT" '.*_\([[:digit:]]*\)_.*' `  
echo $SUBSTRING

Inklusive end, similar to JS and Java implementations. Remove +1 if you do not desire this.

function substring() {
    local str="$1" start="${2}" end="${3}"
    
    if [[ "$start" == "" ]]; then start="0"; fi
    if [[ "$end"   == "" ]]; then end="${#str}"; fi
    
    local length="((${end}-${start}+1))"
    
    echo "${str:${start}:${length}}"
} 

Example:

    substring 01234 0
    01234
    substring 012345 0
    012345
    substring 012345 0 0
    0
    substring 012345 1 1
    1
    substring 012345 1 2
    12
    substring 012345 0 1
    01
    substring 012345 0 2
    012
    substring 012345 0 3
    0123
    substring 012345 0 4
    01234
    substring 012345 0 5
    012345

More example calls:

    substring 012345 0
    012345
    substring 012345 1
    12345
    substring 012345 2
    2345
    substring 012345 3
    345
    substring 012345 4
    45
    substring 012345 5
    5
    substring 012345 6
    
    substring 012345 3 5
    345
    substring 012345 3 4
    34
    substring 012345 2 4
    234
    substring 012345 1 3
    123

Here is a substring.sh file

Usage

`substring.sh $TEXT 2 3` # characters 2-3

`substring.sh $TEXT 2` # characters 2 and after 

substring.sh follows this line

#echo "starting substring"
chars=$1
start=$(($2))
end=$3

i=0
o=""
if [[ -z $end ]]; then
  end=`echo "$chars " | wc -c`
else
  end=$((end))
fi
#echo "length is " $e
a=`echo $chars | sed  's/\(.\)/\1 /g'`
#echo "a is " $a
for c in $a
do
  #echo "substring" $i $e $c
  if [[ i -lt $start ]]; then
    : # DO Nothing
  elif [[ i -gt $end ]]; then
    break;
  else
    o="$o$c"
  fi
  i=$(($i+1))
done
#echo substring returning $o
echo $o

An easy way to use sed replace:

result=$(echo "someletters_12345_moreleters.ext" | sed 's/.*_\(.*\)_.*/\1/g')
echo $result