how to capture last 2 digits/chars of variable

[Rodney Hills]

Here's one more that uses only shell internal commands.

$ x="abcdefg"
$ typeset -R2 y=$x
$ echo $y
fg

"typeset" is an internal command to the shell, so no external processes are run.

HTH

-- Rod Hills

[curt larson_1]

Could you explain the last assignment...what does the #$x do?

from procura's cut and paste,

x=${var%??}

This removes the smallest suffix from the variable that matches the pattern. The pattern is this case is ??. ? matches any character. So, this removes the last two characters from var.

last2char=${var#$x}

this removes the smallest prefix pattern from the variable. From above, $x is everything but the last two characters. So, this removes everything from the front of var except the last two characters. Which leaves you with just the last two characters that your looking to get.

[Cem Tugrul]

Let's try to get "anip" from the string "manipulate"

#!/bin/sh
s="manipulate"
s1=`expr substr $s 2 4`
echo $s1
-----------------------
echo "manipulate" | cut -b 2-5
------------------------
s=manipulate
echo $s | awk '{print substr($0,2,4)}'
-------------------------

Good Luck,

[Jdamian]

I prefer Rodney Hill's solution:

typeset -R2