CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bashsed
Milkncookiez
Milkncookiez

Reputation: 7397

Get string between two sets of characters in shell

I pipe the following string "version": "1.0.0", to sed and I'm trying to get 1.0.0 out of it. I want to get it by the rule: get string between : " and ",.

I've been trying the following: 

sed -e '/:\ \"/,/\ ",/p'
sed -e 's/:\ \"\(.*\)\",/\1/'

The first one does nothing and the last one returns "version"1.0.0, which is close, but no cigar. What am I missing?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 377

Answers (2)

SLePort
SLePort

Reputation: 15461

Another approach, using grep with lookahead/lookbehind:

$ grep -oP '(?<=: ")[^"]*(?=")' <<< '"version": "1.0.0",'
1.0.0

or shorter, using \K to exclude : " from the matched string:

$ grep -oP ': "\K[^"]+' <<< '"version": "1.0.0",'
1.0.0

Upvotes: 1

anubhava
anubhava

Reputation: 785008

You need to match complete input by using .* on either side of your search pattern to be able to replace full line with just the captured group's back-reference.

This sed should work:

s='"version": "1.0.0",'

sed 's/.*: "\([^"]*\)",.*/\1/' <<< "$s"    
1.0.0

Or even this one:

sed 's/.*: "\(.*\)",.*/\1/' <<< "$s"
1.0.0

Upvotes: 1

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