Re: [PLUG] extended 'cut' functionality?

[Matthew Edlefsen <matt.edlefsen@gmail.com>]

>> Is there anything that provides similar, but extended, functionality to
>> count from the _end_ of a string?

>> -Randall

to remove the last 3 characters I'd use:

sed 's/.\{3\}$//'
or even simpler
sed 's/...$//'

though the former scales better :)
it may not be as simple as cut-from-end 3 but imho it's easier to
remember how to use sed than the various flags of all the other unix
commands

> $ dirname /usr/share/doc/mysql-server-5.0/examples/my-small.cnf
> /usr/share/doc/mysql-server-5.0/examples
>
> This utility does not seem to read from standard input, so YMMV. You
> may be able to nest backticked statements, but that just seems so
> wrong...
>
> --
> Jim

xargs with the -n flag can do this kind of thing:

$ perldoc -l IO::Compress::Zip | xargs -n 1 dirname
/usr/lib/perl5/core_perl/IO/Compress

If you have problems with spaces in names you can add quotes using (again) sed
$ echo "/root/silly dir/file.txt" | xargs -n 1 dirname
/root
dir
$ echo "/root/silly dir/file.txt" | sed 's/.*/"&"/' | xargs -n 1 dirname
/root/silly dir
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