Delete everyting preceding and including a certain substring from variable

Anne K. picture Anne K. · Nov 9, 2016 · Viewed 18.4k times · Source

In Bash, how can I delete characters from a variable until a certain substring?

Example:

ananas1kiwi2apple1banana2tree

shall look like this:

apple1banana2tree

The substring in this case is 2.

Answer

heemayl picture heemayl · Nov 9, 2016

If you want to remove the substring upto 2, using bash parameter expansion:

${var#*2}
  • # does non-greedy match from left, use ## for greediness

  • #*2 matches and discards upto first 2 from variable var

Example:

$ var='ananas1kiwi2apple1banana2tree'
$ echo "${var#*2}"
apple1banana2tree