How do I get two strings separated by a phrase in between?

Question

Let's say I have a string and its contents are US1SERVLOC2. I want to be able to get the strings US1 and LOC2 from that string.

echo "US1SERVLOC2" | cut -f1 -d 'SERV'
echo "US1SERVLOC2" | cut -f2 -d 'SERV'

I originally tried this but cut doesn't like delimiters that aren't single characters. How do I accomplish this?

Answer 1

Try:

s=US1SERVLOC2
echo ${s%SERV*}  # prints US1
echo ${s#*SERV}  # prints LOC2

See:

• Substring Removal section in the Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide.

• This question.

Note:

• %SERV* will cut SERV* from the end of s.
• #*SERV will cut *SERV from the start of s.

• If SERV appears multiple times, you can use %%/## instead of %/# to extend the matches. However, this will only allow you to cut at the first or last occurence of SERV. If that is not suitable, awk will gladly accept multi-character field separators:

  s=US1SERVLOC1US2SERVLOC2US3SERVLOC3
  echo $s | awk -F "SERV" '{print $2}'  # prints LOC1US2
  

Answer 2

Use built-in shell variable expansion operators.

var=US1SERVLOC2
part1=${var%SERV*}
part2=${var#*SERV}

However, these won't work the same as your attempted cut if SERV appears more than once in the string.