CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bash
temporary_user_name
temporary_user_name

Reputation: 37068

Bad substitution on bash substringing operation

I am trying to get this simple function working:

p4edit(){
    p4 edit ${$1:25}
}

I read the other popular bad substitution question on SO and it did not seem to help me or be related to my problem. What am I doing wrong here? I want to cut off the first 25 characters of the argument provided to my function.

I have noticed a simple echo ${"test":3} fails the same way, but this succeeds:

test="test"
echo ${test:3}

I am just running this in a bash instance.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 297

Answers (2)

B.G.
B.G.

Reputation: 6026

Why two times a $ ?

p4edit(){
  echo ${1:25}
}

works fine for me. String functions in bash are a bit tricky, since they are not really consistent. But ${} already defines, that you are looking for a variable. So only submit the name to it. There are some stringfunctions with ${#var} but as far as I know, there is never a $ inside a ${}

Upvotes: 2

Jeff Schaller
Jeff Schaller

Reputation: 2546

You have too much money! (too many dollar signs). Use:

p4edit(){
    p4 edit ${1:25}
}

To extract the 25th-and-onwards characters from $1.

Upvotes: 2

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