Hi,

If I use command:

cut -c1-9, this will extract the first 9 characters.

What command should I use if I want to extract the last 9 characters.

Thanks.

sed 's/^.*\(.........\)$/\1/'

Some version of cut do not require a second value in the character range.

cut -c 10-

You could also use awk

echo 123456789abcdefghi | awk '{ print substr($0,10,9) }'

You can also use the range notation with sed.

echo 123456789abcdefghi | sed -e 's/^.\{9\}\(.*\)/\1/'

You can use the ksh built-ins to strip leading or trailing patterns from a variable. To retain the last 9:

var2=${var1%${var1#?????????}}

You can't get 9 out of less than 9, so the above returns null when var1 is less than 9.  If you want the last 9 or less, then:

if [ ${#var1} -gt 9 ] ; then
   var2=${var1%${var1#?????????}}
else
   var2=$var1
fi

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