awk substr()

[alfie002]

Dear all,

i have used awk before and never experienced any problems. However, I am using the substr function to extract substrings from a string. Using the following format

substr(string,start_pos,end_post)

start_pos is an integer representing the start position, this works as expected.

however the end_pos is a variable which represents the length of the string minus 1 character, I want to strip of quote marks around the string.

example as follows;

print substr($field_value, 1, length($field_value -1))"

Field_value has the length of the string and I want to strip off 1 character position. However, when I run this code, instead of getting 8 characters returned I get 2 !!! This is weird and I have tried isolating the code but with no joy.

I am running it on solaris 8.

has any one experience this problem.

Thanks

Alf

 

[PHV]

You may try to replace this:
print substr($field_value, 1, length($field_value -1))
with this:
print substr($field_value, 1, length($field_value)-1)

Hope This Helps, PH.
Want to get great answers to your Tek-Tips questions? Have a look at FAQ219-2884 or FAQ181-2886

 

[alfie002]

thanks phv,

that worked.

Alf