Trying to retrieve first 5 characters from string in bash error?

Question

I'm trying to retrieve the first 5 characters from a string and but keep getting a Bad substitution error for the string manipulation line, I have the following lines in my teststring.sh script:

TESTSTRINGONE="MOTEST"  NEWTESTSTRING=${TESTSTRINGONE:0:5} echo ${NEWTESTSTRING} 

I have went over the syntax many times and cant see what im doing wrong

Thanks

Answer 1

Depending on your shell, you may be able to use the following syntax:

expr substr $string $position $length 

So for your example:

TESTSTRINGONE="MOTEST" echo `expr substr ${TESTSTRINGONE} 0 5` 

---

Alternatively,

echo 'MOTEST' | cut -c1-5 

or

echo 'MOTEST' | awk '{print substr($0,0,5)}' 

Answer 2

echo 'mystring' |cut -c1-5 is an alternative solution to ur problem.

more on unix cut program