split string with a certain character to form a path

Question

I have a string abc_d_e75_f10_xyz_l_11 I want to split it so that I want to construct a string of an existing directory from this string to cd to it.

So in this example abc_d_e75_f10_xyz_l_11 I want to split using the _ character where I want to write this command cd /home/userA/abc/d_e75_f10 and neglect the rest of the string.

Answer 1

You can do:

echo "abc_d_e75_f10_xyz_l_11" | sed 's/_/\//' | cut -d "_" -f1-3

This will replace the first _ with / as well as trim the string.

Output:

abc/d_e75_f10

Answer 2

You can use the bash shell's built-in string manipulation capabilities e.g.

$ var="abc_d_e75_f10_xyz_l_11"
$ echo "/home/userA/${var/_//}"
/home/userA/abc/d_e75_f10_xyz_l_11

Answer 3

You want sed.

sed is a tool for performing search and replace operations on text.

In this case it seems like you want to replace the first occurrence of _ with /.

This will do that: echo "abc_d_e75_f10_xyz_l_11" | sed "s/_/\//"

It looks wierd with the slashes but the idea is "s/search/replace/". And / has to be escaped.