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