How can I use sed between special characters?

Question

If you type id user_name you get uid=500(user_name).

How can I use sed to get everything between the = and ( so you get 500?

I have sed -n ‘/=/,/(/p’.

Please try `sed 's/^uid=$[0-9]*$.*/\1/'`. – Rfroes87 Sep 03 '20 at 18:30 — Rfroes87, Sep 03 '20 at 18:30

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 03 '20 at 18:35

1

You can group the number 500 - or any integer value, for that matter - and return it with sed 's/^uid=$[0-9]*$.*/\1/'.

answered Sep 03 '20 at 18:35

Rfroes87

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 03 '20 at 18:44

@Rfroes87 provided a fine solution in a comment - sed 's/^uid=([0-9]*).*/\1/'

But you can do it a lot of ways that don't involve another process.

You might be able to just use something like $UID or $uidalready present - check your env withset`.

You can use read -

IFS='=(' read x myUID x <<< $(id)

Or you could use parameter parsing in steps -

myUID="$(id)"
myUID="${myUID#*=}"
myUID="${myUID%%(*}"

score -1 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 03 '20 at 18:31

-1

You can do it using the following: sed 's_^uid=$.*$(.*$_\1_g'

answered Sep 03 '20 at 18:31

Gustavo Kawamoto

3 Answers3