How to truncate string in bash script?

[daikeyang]

Hi, guys.

I want to write a bash script, which will read two strings: firstname and surname, then the script will generate a username. For example: the user name for "Peter Brown" will be brownp.

My questions are:
1. how can I get first letter from variable $firstname?
2. how can I join the two strings together?

Thanks in advance

-K

[sridhargumpula]

Hi,
for your first question answer is
1) how can I get first letter from variable $firstname?

str2=`echo $surname | cut -c1`

for the second question answer is
2. how can I join the two strings together?

user=`echo $name$str2`

finally i wrote a script for you to add a user automatically with user's surname
example : username is sridhar and surname is gumpula
it creates a user with "sridharg"

see below the full code...

#!/bin/bash
echo "Please Enter your name.."
read name
echo "Enter your surname.."
read surname
str2=`echo $surname | cut -c1`
user=`echo $name$str2`
useradd $user
echo password | passwd --stdin $user

[shy_guest]

There is a better solution to the truncation question - better because it is simpler & built into the shell.

I happened on it in my Linux In A Nutshell (4th Edition) on p.587 (Chapter 7 Bash - Pattern matching operators)

${variable:n:l} starting from n (where the first position is 0) returns a substring of length l.

I just tried it out as I need just the first 2 numbers in a string.