Use sed to retrieve IP address from one string - regex

I have one variable
my_var=Hello 192.168.0.1:22 World
I want to retrieve this IP from variable, I write sed command as
echo $my_var | sed -n "s/.*\([0-9\.]\+\):.*$/\1/p"
I expect get "192.168.0.1" as return. Instead, I got return as "1"
Could someone help me? What is wrong with my sed

The problem is that .* is greedy, so it will match the numbers in the IP. You need to make it stop at the space before the IP.
echo $my_var | sed -n "s/.* \([0-9.]\+\):.*$/\1/p"
If sed supported PCRE, you could use a non-greedy quantifier .*?, but it only has BRE and ERE.
If there isn't always a space, you could match any non-number. But you also need to allow for the IP to be at the beginning of the string.
echo $my_var | sed -n "s/^\(\|.*[^0-9]\)\([0-9.]\+\):.*$/\2/p"
BTW, it's not necessary to escape . inside [].

With bash parameter expansion
$ r='Hello 192.168.0.1:22 World'
$ # remove upto first space
$ echo "${r#* }"
192.168.0.1:22 World
$ s="${r#* }"
$ # remove from first : to end of line
$ echo "${s%%:*}"
192.168.0.1
With awk
$ # space or : is input delimiter
$ echo "$r" | awk -F'[ :]' '{print $2}'
192.168.0.1

Related

sed: struggling with substitution and regex for ^*=

I am running a linux bash script. From stout lines like: /gpx/trk/name=MyTrack1, I want to keep only the end of line after =.
I am struggling to understand why the following sed command is not working as I expect:
echo "/gpx/trk/name=MyTrack1" | sed -e "s/^*=//"
(I also tried)
echo "/gpx/trk/name=MyTrack1" | sed -e "s/^*\=//"
The return is always /gpx/trk/name=MyTrack1 and not MyTrack1
An even simpler way if this is the only structure you are concerned about:
echo "/gpx/trk/name=MyTrack1" | cut -d = -f 2
Simply try:
echo "/gpx/trk/name=MyTrack1" | sed 's/.*=//'
Solution 2nd: With another sed.
echo "/gpx/trk/name=MyTrack1" | sed 's/\(.*=\)\(.*\)/\2/'
Explanation: As per OP's request adding explanation for this code here:
s: Means telling sed to do substitution operation.
\(.*=\): Creating first place in memory to keep this regex's value which tells sed to keep everything in 1st place of memory from starting to till = so text /gpx/trk/name= will be in 1 place.
\(.*\): Creating 2nd place in memory for sed telling it to keep everything now(after the match of 1st one, so this will start after =) and have value in it as MyTrack1
/\2/: Now telling sed to substitute complete line with only 2nd memory place holder which is MyTrack1
Solution 3rd: Or with awk considering that your Input_file is same as shown samples.
echo "/gpx/trk/name=MyTrack1" | awk -F'=' '{print $2}'
Solution 4th: With awk's match.
echo "/gpx/trk/name=MyTrack1" | awk 'match($0,/=.*$/){print substr($0,RSTART+1,RLENGTH-1)}'
$ echo "/gpx/trk/name=MyTrack1" | sed -e "s/^.*=//"
MyTrack1
The regular expression ^.*= matches anything up to and including the last = in the string.
Your regular expression ^*= would match the literal string *= at the start of a string, e.g.
$ echo "*=/gpx/trk/name=MyTrack1" | sed -e "s/^*=//"
/gpx/trk/name=MyTrack1
The * character in a regular expression usually modifies the immediately previous expression so that zero or more of it may be matched. When * occurs at the start of an expression on the other hand, it matches the character *.
Not to take you off the sed track, but this is easy with Bash alone:
$ echo "$s"
/gpx/trk/name=MyTrack1
$ echo "${s##*=}"
MyTrack1
The ##*= pattern removes the maximal pattern from the beginning of the string to the last =:
$ s="1=2=3=the rest"
$ echo "${s##*=}"
the rest
The equivalent in sed would be:
$ echo "$s" | sed -E 's/^.*=(.*)/\1/'
the rest
Where #*= would remove the minimal pattern:
$ echo "${s#*=}"
2=3=the rest
And in sed:
$ echo "$s" | sed -E 's/^[^=]*=(.*)/\1/'
2=3=the rest
Note the difference in * in Bash string functions vs a sed regex:
The * in Bash (in this context) is glob like - itself means 'any character'
The * in a regex refers to the previous pattern and for 'any character' you need .*
Bash has extensive string manipulation functions. You can read about Bash string patterns in BashFAQ.

How to remove special characters like a single quote from a string?

Using Sed I tried but it did not worked out.
Basically, I have a string say:-
Input:-
'http://www.google.com/photos'
Output required:-
http://www.google.com
I tried using sed but escaping ' is not possible.
what i did was:-
sed 's/\'//' | sed 's/photos//'
sed for photos worked but for ' it didn't.
Please suggest what can be the solution.
Escaping ' in sed is possible via a workaround:
sed 's/'"'"'//g'
# |^^^+--- bash string with the single quote inside
# | '--- return to sed string
# '------- leave sed string and go to bash
But for this job you should use tr:
tr -d "'"
Perl Replacements have a syntax identical to sed, works better than sed, is installed almost in every system by default and works for all machines the same way (portability):
$ echo "'http://www.google.com/photos'" |perl -pe "s#\'##g;s#(.*//.*/)(.*$)#\1#g"
http://www.google.com/
Mind that this solution will keep only the domain name with http in front, discarding all words following http://www.google.com/
If you want to do it with sed , you can use sed "s/'//g" as advised by Wiktor Stribiżew in comments.
PS: I sometimes refer to special chars with their ascii hex code of the special char as advised by man ascii, which is \x27 for '
So for sed you can do it:
$ echo "'http://www.google.com/photos'" |sed -r "s#'##g; s#(.*//.*/)(.*$)#\1#g;"
http://www.google.com/
# sed "s#\x27##g' will also remove the single quote using hex ascii code.
$ echo "'http://www.google.com/photos'" |sed -r "s#'##g; s#(.*//.*)(/.*$)#\1#g;"
http://www.google.com #Without the last slash
If your string is stored in a variable, you can achieve above operations with pure bash, without the need of external tools like sed or perl like this:
$ a="'http://www.google.com/photos'" && a="${a:1:-1}" && echo "$a"
http://www.google.com/photos
# This removes 1st and last char of the variable , whatever this char is.
$ a="'http://www.google.com/photos'" && a="${a:1:-1}" && echo "${a%/*}"
http://www.google.com
#This deletes every char from the end of the string up to the first found slash /.
#If you need the last slash you can just add it to the echo manually like echo "${a%/*}/" -->http://www.google.com/
It's unclear if the ' are actually around your string, although this should take care it:
str="'http://www.google.com/photos'"
echo "$str" | sed s/\'//g | sed 's/\/photos//g'
Combined:
echo "$str" | sed -e "s/'//g" -e 's/\/photos//g'
Using tr:
echo "$str" | sed -e "s/\/photos//g" | tr -d \'
Result:
http://www.google.com
If the single quotes are not around your string it should work regardless.

Using sed for extracting substring from string

I just started using sed from doing regex. I wanted to extract XXXXXX from *****/XXXXXX> so I was following
sed -n "/^/*/(\S*\).>$/p"
If I do so I get following error
sed: 1: "/^//(\S).>$/p": invalid command code *
I am not sure what am I missing here.
Try:
$ echo '*****/XXXXXX>' | sed 's|.*/||; s|>.*||'
XXXXXX
The substitute command s|.*/|| removes everything up to the last / in the string. The substitute command s|>.*|| removes everything from the first > in the string that remains to the end of the line.
Or:
$ echo '*****/XXXXXX>' | sed -E 's|.*/(.*)>|\1|'
XXXXXX
The substitute command s|.*/(.*)>|\1| captures whatever is between the last / and the last > and saves it in group 1. That is then replaced with group 1, \1.
In my opinion awk performs better this task. Using -F you can use multiple delimiters such as "/" and ">":
echo "*****/XXXXXX>" | awk -F'/|>' '{print $1}'
Of course you could use sed, but it's more complicated to understand. First I'm removing the first part (delimited by "/") and after the second one (delimited by ">"):
echo "*****/XXXXXX>" | sed -e s/.*[/]// -e s/\>//
Both will bring the expected result: XXXXXX.
with grep if you have pcre option
$ echo '*****/XXXXXX>' | grep -oP '/\K[^>]+'
XXXXXX
/\K positive lookbehind / - not part of output
[^>]+ characters other than >
echo '*****/XXXXXX>' |sed 's/^.*\/\|>$//g'
XXXXXX
Start from start of the line, then proceed till lask / ALSO find > followed by EOL , if any of these found then replace it with blank.

How do I grab the part of this string after a `/`?

Here is my Bash code:
echo "Some string/Another string" | grep -o "\/.*"
This returns /Another string.
But I do not want the / included in the value returned by echo.
How do I change the regex do accomplish this?
EDIT: I want to match everything after the /, no matter what is after it. "Another string" is not always after the /.
If you have GNU Grep that supports PCRE then you can use \K to forget the match.
$ echo "Some string/Another string" | grep -oP "\/\K.*"
Another string
With sed :
$ sed 's/.*\/\(.*\)/\1/' <<< "Some string/Another string"
Another string
It search any characther up to next /, then capture and print following characters.
It may be more readable in ERE mode (-r option with GNU sed) and with another separator :
sed -r 's|.*/(.*)|\1|'
With parameter expansion:
$ string='Some string/Another string'
$ echo "${string#*/}"
Another string
The expansion with # removes what comes after it from the beginning of the expanded parameter.
With awk:
$ awk -F/ '{print $2}' <<< "$string"
Another string
This sets the field separator to / and prints the second field.
You can do this with cut command:
If you want string between first and second occurrence of /
cut -d '/' -f 2 <<< "Some string/Another string/abc"
output: Another string
If you want entire string after first occurrence of /
cut -d '/' -f 2- <<< "Some string/Another string/abc"
output: Another string/abc

Bash shave a first and/or last character from string, but only if it is a certain character

In bash I need to shave a first and/or last character from string, but only if it is a certain character.
If I have | I need
/foo/bar/hah/ => foo/bar/hah
foo/bar/hah => foo/bar/hah
You can downvote me for not listing everything I've tried. But the fact is I've tried at least 35 differents sed strings and bash character stuff, many of which was from stack overflow. I simply cannot get this to happen.
what's the problem with the simple one?
sed "s/^\///;s/\/$//"
Output is
foo/bar/hah
foo/bar/hah
In pure bash :
$ var=/foo/bar/hah/
$ var=${var%/}
$ echo ${var#/}
foo/bar/hah
$
Check bash parameter expansion
or with sed :
$ sed -r 's#(^/|/$)##g' file
How about simply this:
echo "$x" | sed -e 's:^/::' -e 's:/$::'
Further to #sputnick's answer and from this answer, here's a function that would do it:
STR="/foo/bar/etc/";
STRB="foo/bar/etc";
function trimslashes {
STR="$1"
STR=${STR#"/"}
STR=${STR%"/"}
echo "$STR"
}
trimslashes $STR
trimslashes $STRB
# foo/bar/etc
# foo/bar/etc
echo '/foo/bar/hah/' | sed 's#^/##' | sed 's#/$##'
assuming the / character is the only one you're trying to remove, then sed -E 's_^[/](.*)_\1_' should do the job:
$ echo "$var1"; echo "$var2"
/foo/bar/hah
foo/bar/hah
$ echo "$var1" | sed -E 's_^[/](.*)_\1_'
foo/bar/hah
$ echo "$var2" | sed -E 's_^[/](.*)_\1_'
foo/bar/hah
if you also need to replace other characters at the start of the line, add it to the [/] class. for example, if you need to replace / or -, it would be sed -E 's_^[/-](.*)_\1_'
Here is an awk version:
echo "/foo/bar/hah/" | awk '{gsub(/^\/|\/$/,"")}1'
foo/bar/hah