Example of shell script – string extraction:

gistfile1.txt

copy from http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/au-unixtext/
Example of shell script – string extraction:
$ cat string_example1.sh
#!/bin/sh
FILEPATH=/home/w/wyoes/samples/ksh_samples-v1.0.ksh
echo '${FILEPATH}      =' ${FILEPATH}      "  # the full filepath"
echo '${#FILEPATH}     =' ${#FILEPATH}      "  # length of the string"
echo '${FILEPATH%.*}   =' ${FILEPATH%.*}   "  # truncate right of the last dot"
echo '${FILEPATH%%.*}  =' ${FILEPATH%%.*}  "  # truncate right of the first dot"
echo '${FILEPATH%%/w*} =' ${FILEPATH%%/w*} "  # truncate right of the first /w"
echo '${FILEPATH#/*/*/}  =' ${FILEPATH#/*/*/}  "  # truncate left of the third slash"
echo '${FILEPATH##/*/} =' ${FILEPATH##/*/} "  # truncate left of the last slash"

$ ./string_example1.sh
${FILEPATH}=/home/w/wyoes/samples/ksh_samples-v1.0.ksh # the full filepath
${#FILEPATH} = 42                                      # length of the string
${FILEPATH%.*}=/home/w/wyoes/samples/ksh_samples-v1.0  # truncate right of the last dot
${FILEPATH%%.*}=/home/w/wyoes/samples/ksh_samples-v1   # truncate right of the first dot
${FILEPATH%%/w*}=/home                                 # truncate right of the first /w
${FILEPATH#/*/*/}=wyoes/samples/ksh_samples-v1.0.ksh   # truncate left of the third slash
${FILEPATH##/*/}=ksh_samples-v1.0.ksh                  # truncate left of the last slash