How to remove the first/last characters from a variable in a shell script
While working on a Bash / Fish script I had the need to remove the last n characters from a string and it took way longer to figure out than I wanted.
Here’s the solution I found:
#!/bin/sh
original="my original string"
result=$(echo $original | cut -c10-) #cut first 10 chars
echo $result
To remove the last n characters:
#!/bin/sh
original="my original string"
result=$(echo $original | rev | cut -c10- | rev) #cut last 10 chars
echo $result
→ Get my Linux Command Line Handbook
→ I wrote 17 books to help you become a better developer:
- C Handbook
- Command Line Handbook
- CSS Handbook
- Express Handbook
- Git Cheat Sheet
- Go Handbook
- HTML Handbook
- JS Handbook
- Laravel Handbook
- Next.js Handbook
- Node.js Handbook
- PHP Handbook
- Python Handbook
- React Handbook
- SQL Handbook
- Svelte Handbook
- Swift Handbook
Also, JOIN MY CODING BOOTCAMP, an amazing cohort course that will be a huge step up in your coding career - covering React, Next.js - next edition February 2025