How would I split the following string in bash

Question

Suppose we have a string of the form

first;second;third;fourth

I would like to print

second;third;fourth

How would I do it?

Where is that string coming from? Is it stored in a variable? — ztank1013, Oct 29 '11 at 19:22

CB Bailey · Accepted Answer · 2011-10-29T19:25:08.540

3

Reading between the lines of your requirements, if you want to print everything after the first semicolon, I would use the POSIX standard expr utility.

expr "first;second;third;fourth" : '[^;]*;\(.*\)'

edited Oct 29 '11 at 19:25

answered Oct 29 '11 at 19:03

CB Bailey

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@ennuikiller: What exactly do you mean by cryptic? It was the most portable solution that I could think of at the time. – CB Bailey Oct 29 '11 at 20:19

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 29 '11 at 19:06

3

Use parameter substitution (match beginning; delete shortest part):

str="first;second;third;fourth"

echo "${str#*;}"

answered Oct 29 '11 at 19:06

Fritz G. Mehner

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score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 29 '11 at 19:35

3

The cut command may do the trick very nicely:

echo "first;second;third;forth" | cut -d';' -f2-

answered Oct 29 '11 at 19:35

ztank1013

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DigitalRoss · Answer 4 · 2011-10-29T19:40:34.223

1

    $ v="first;second;third;fourth"
    $ echo ${v#first;}
    second;third;fourth
    $ q=${v#*;}
    $ echo $q

edited Oct 29 '11 at 19:40

answered Oct 29 '11 at 19:07

DigitalRoss

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score 1 · Answer 5 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:27

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echo "first;second;thrid;fourth" | awk -F";" '{print substr($0,index($0,$2))}'

A lot of these answers work, and I think cut may be the best solution, but its a slow night so I added another, print field 2 to end of the line.

Its very similar to a different question however:

Print Field 'N' to End of Line

edited May 23 '17 at 12:27

Community

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answered Oct 30 '11 at 22:10

matchew

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How would I split the following string in bash

5 Answers5