I am given a string like this: "20040920"
It represents 2004 as the year 09 as the month and 20 as the day.

How can I cut that string down to 0409?

echo '20040920' | sed -e 's/^....//g'

or [in ksh]:
a='20040920'
a="${a##????}"

Also:
echo '20040920' | cut -c3-6

what if I had jobxxx.ini and I wanted xxx? but I didnt know the length of xxx?

so it could be job1234.ini or job123.ini?

Thanks again

This is how I force it to work:

export JOBNUMBER=`echo $1 | sed -e 's@.inp@@'`
export JOBNUMBER=`echo ${JOBNUMBER} | sed -e 's@job@@'`

Im sure there is a better way though...

Try:

Code:

a=$(echo "job1234.ini"|cut -c5-)
a="${a%.*}"

echo "job134.ini"|cut -c4-

works for me, -c5- cuts the first digit off.

That does work though, thanks

I was hoping for a one liner though =\