Extract Data From A Variable

[Grizzlyman]

Hi Im wondering how to extract data from a variable, maybe using SED or AWK. I have a variable that contains YYYYMMDD, something like var=20091013. Can I extract the year, YYYY, to varY, the month, MM, to varM and the day, DD to varD?

[birdman]

As always, there's probably a better way to do this:

var=20091013
varY=`echo $var | sed -n "s/\([0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]\)[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]/\1/p"`
varM=`echo $var | sed -n "s/[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]\([0-9][0-9]\)[0-9][0-9]/\1/p"`
varD=`echo $var | sed -n "s/[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]\([0-9][0-9]\)/\1/p"`

Which should output:

$ echo "$varY $varM $varD"
2009 10 13

[blinky]

In bash (if that's an good for you try:

var="20091013"
year="${var:0:4}"
month="${var:4:2}"
day="${var:6:2}"

echo $var $year $month $day should print 20091013 2009 10 13