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How to get the char at a given position of a string in shell script?

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7 Answers 7

Reset to default
63

In bash with "Parameter Expansion" ${parameter:offset:length}

$ var=abcdef $ echo ${var:0:1} a $ echo ${var:3:1} d

The same parameter expansion can be used to assign a new variable:

$ x=${var:1:1} $ echo $x b

Edit: Without parameter expansion (not very elegant, but that's what came to me first)

$ charpos() { pos=$1;shift; echo "$@"|sed 's/^.\{'$pos'\}\(.\).*$/\1/';} $ charpos 8 what ever here r
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Alternative to parameter expansion is expr substr

substr STRING POS LENGTH substring of STRING, POS counted from 1

For example:

$ expr substr hello 2 1 e
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  • cool, should have checked expr more thoroughly. Commented Mar 17, 2011 at 18:41
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    While this appears to work with the expr from GNU coreutils, substr is not included in the expr from FreeBSD, NetBSD or OS X. This isn't a portable solution. Commented Feb 14, 2017 at 17:04
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    @ghoti, note that substr is not originally a GNU extension. The original implementation of expr came from PWB Unix in the late 70s and had substr (but not :). Commented Sep 6, 2019 at 8:06
  • @StéphaneChazelas, thanks for adding historical perspective. :) While I'm pretty sure PWB usage isn't relevant to the OP, it's always fun to track features and changes through the decades. GNU tends to be many people's default, but in general, I think I'd avoid using options that aren't clearly POSIX, and are known to be missing from major unices. Commented Sep 6, 2019 at 20:47
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cut -c

If the variable does not contain newlines you can do:

myvar='abc' printf '%s\n' "$myvar" | cut -c2

outputs:

b

awk substr is another POSIX alternative that works even if the variable has newlines:

myvar="$(printf 'a\nb\n')" # note that the last newline is stripped by # the command substitution awk -- 'BEGIN {print substr (ARGV[1], 3, 1)}' "$myvar"

outputs:

b

printf '%s\n' is to avoid problems with escape characters: https://stackoverflow.com/a/40423558/895245 e.g.:

myvar='\n' printf '%s\n' "$myvar" | cut -c1

outputs \ as expected.

See also: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1405611/extracting-first-two-characters-of-a-string-shell-scripting

Tested in Ubuntu 19.04.

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    printf '%s' "$myvar" | cut -c2 is not POSIX as the output of printf is not text unless $myvar ends in a newline character. It otherwise assumes the variable doesn't contain newline characters as cut cuts each line of its input. Commented Sep 6, 2019 at 8:11
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    The awk one would be more efficient and reliable with awk -- 'BEGIN {print substr (ARGV[1], 2, 1)}' "$myvar" Commented Sep 6, 2019 at 8:11
  • Note that with current versions of GNU cut, that doesn't work for multi-byte characters (same for mawk or busybox awk) Commented Sep 6, 2019 at 8:12
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    The behaviour of cut is unspecified if the input is not text (though cut implementations are required to handle lines or arbitrary length). The output of printf abc is not text as it doesn't end in a newline character. In practice depending on the implementation, if you pipe that to cut -c2, you get either b, b<newline> or nothing at all. You'd need printf 'abc\n' | cut -c2 to get a behaviour specified by POSIX (that's required to output b<newline>) Commented Sep 6, 2019 at 11:00
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    @StéphaneChazelas ah OK, awesome, I wasn't aware that POSIX defined what a "text file" is! unix.stackexchange.com/questions/446237/… Commented Sep 6, 2019 at 11:02
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You can use the cut command. To get the 3rd postion:

echo "SAMPLETEXT" | cut -c3

Check this link http://www.folkstalk.com/2012/02/cut-command-in-unix-linux-examples.html

(Advanced cases) However, modifying IFS is also a good thing, especially when your input might have spaces. In that case alone, use the one below

saveifs=$IFS IFS=$(echo -en "\n\b") echo "SAMPLETEXT" | cut -c3 IFS=$saveifs
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    I can't see how IFS would come into play in the code that you have posted. Commented Aug 7, 2018 at 7:01
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With zsh or yash, you'd use:

$ text='€$*₭£' $ printf '%s\n' "${text[3]}" *

(in zsh, you can shorten it to printf '%s\n' $text[3]).

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This is a portable POSIX shell variant, which only uses builtins.
First a oneliner, than a better readable function.
It uses "parameter expansion" explained here:
https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/V3_chap02.html#tag_18_06_02

#!/bin/sh x(){ s=$1;p=$2;i=0;l=${#s};while i=$((i+1));do r=${s#?};f=${s%"$r"};s=$r;case $i in $p)CHAR=$f&&return;;$l)return 1;;esac;done;} x ABCDEF 3 # output substring at pos 3 echo $CHAR # output is 'C'

Here the oneliner explained.

#!/bin/sh string_get_pos() { local string="$1" # e.g. ABCDEF local pos="$2" # e.g. 3 local rest first i=0 local length="${#string}" # e.g. 6 while i=$(( i + 1 )); do rest="${string#?}" # e.g. BCDEF first=${string%"$rest"} # e.g. A string="$rest" case "$i" in $pos) export CHAR="$first" && return 0 ;; $length) return 1 ;; esac done } string_get_pos ABCDEF 3 echo $CHAR # output is 'C'
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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
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