Using sed, how do you print the first 'N' characters of a line?

Question

Don't use sed, use cut:

grep .... | cut -c 1-N

If you MUST use sed:

grep ... | sed -e 's/^\(.\{12\}\).*/\1/'

colrm x

For example, if you need the first 100 characters:

cat file |colrm 101 

It's been around for years and is in most linux's and bsd's (freebsd for sure), usually by default. I can't remember ever having to type apt-get install colrm.

don't have to use grep either

an example:

sed -n '/searchwords/{s/^\(.\{12\}\).*/\1/g;p}' file

Strictly with sed:

grep ... | sed -e 's/^\(.\{N\}\).*$/\1/'

To print the N first characters you can remove the N+1 characters up to the end of line:

$ sed 's/.//5g' <<< "defn-test"
defn