last character

Bash: Remove the last character from each line 1

 in Bash  tagged cut / last character / remove / rev by

The following script, uses rev and cut to remove the last character from each line in a pipe.
rev utility reverses lines character-wise.
cut removes sections  from each of line.
It is a very simple script where we reverse the line once, remove the first character (which was the last one in the original form of the line) and finally we reverse the line back with the last character missing.


echo -e "hi\nHI" | rev | cut -c 2- | rev;

# Will produce:
h
H

 

Remove the last character from a bash variable

 in Bash / GNU/Linux / HowTos  tagged bash / character / last character / string / variable by

The following method, removes the last character from a bash variable by using a regular expression that matches any character.


VAR=${VAR%?};

The functionality ${string%substring} deletes shortest match of $substring from the back of $string.
The question mark ? matches zero or one of the previous regular expression. It is generally used for matching single characters.
So by using ? as our $substring we instruct bash to match any character at the end of the variable and remove it.

Example


$ VAR="Banana";
$ VAR=${VAR%?};
$ echo $VAR;
Banan