Searching for a substring in a string in shell script

Question

I have a very lengthy string (length is also not fixed) I want to extract a substring lying between 'email' and '@gmail.com'

Suppose it is

xhxjcndjcnkjcnd cjkjcdckjncx email:substring@gmail.comjndhcjkdhcnchjdccb djc

I want to extract the 'substring' in the String.. Can I do this using regular expression , using sed tool.?

Do you have other mail than gmail? If so, solution using gmail as search will no work. — Jotne, Sep 20 '13 at 12:48

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 20 '13 at 10:51

3

perl -lne 'print $1 if(/email:(.*?)\@gmail.com/)'

Tested below:

> echo "xhxjcndjcnkjcnd cjkjcdckjncx email:substring@gmail.comjndhcjkdhcnchjdccb djc" | perl -lne 'print $1 if(/email:(.*?)\@gmail.com/)'
substring
>

answered Sep 20 '13 at 10:51

Vijay

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score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

1

VALUE="xhxjcndjcnkjcnd cjkjcdckjncx email:substring@gmail.comjndhcjkdhcnchjdccb djc"

echo $VALUE | awk -F":" '{print $2}' |cut -d@ -f1

edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

Community

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answered Sep 20 '13 at 10:52

hek444

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The `sed` just do the same as `awk`, so why not two `awk` like this `awk -F: '{print $2}' | awk -F@ '{print $1}'` or two `sed`? – Jotne Sep 20 '13 at 11:59

Benoit Blanchon · Answer 3 · 2013-09-20T11:28:28.877

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Using sed:

INPUT="xhxjcndjcnkjcnd cjkjcdckjncx email:substring@gmail.comjndhcjkdhcnchjdccb djc"
USERNAME=$(sed -n "s/.*\email:\(.*\)@gmail\.com.*/\\1/p" <<< $INPUT)
echo $USERNAME

edited Sep 20 '13 at 11:28

answered Sep 20 '13 at 11:21

Benoit Blanchon

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This returns `substring@gmail.com` not correctly `substring`. You should also change backtics to paranthese `$(data)` Eksample `MAIL=$(sed -n "s/.*\email:$.*@gmail\.com$.*/\\1/p" <<< $INPUT)` – Jotne Sep 20 '13 at 11:26

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 20 '13 at 11:23

1

Another awk

awk -F":" '{split($2,a,"@");print a[1]}' file
substring

It you have many lines to search for gmail addresses

awk -F":" '/gmail\.com/ {split($2,a,"@");print a[1]}'
substring

answered Sep 20 '13 at 11:23

Jotne

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score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Sep 20 '13 at 15:57

The shell can handle this:

$ line='xhxjcndjcnkjcnd cjkjcdckjncx email:substring@gmail.comjndhcjkdhcnchjdccb djc'
$ name=${line#*email:}       # remove the prefix ending with "email:"
$ name=${name%@gmail.com*}   # remove the suffix starting with "@gmail.com"
$ echo $name
substring

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Sep 20 '13 at 11:34

0

I think grep (with positive lookahead and positive lookbehind) is the correct tool for the job:

$ grep -oP '(?<=email:).*?(?=@gmail\.com)'<<< "xhxjcndjcnkjcnd cjkjcdckjncx email:substring@gmail.comjndhcjkdhcnchjdccb djc"
substring

answered Sep 20 '13 at 11:34

user000001

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Searching for a substring in a string in shell script

6 Answers6