Read first characters of a variable in bash script? [duplicate]

Question

I have a file where i get some informations through a bash script to put data in a DB table and i'd like to know how to read the first characters of a variable because if it starts with "CE-" that line's data will go into a table if not they must be inserted in an other one, how can i do this?

Answer 1

Like this-

var=CE-xxxxx
echo "$var"
output- CE-xxxxx

var2=$(echo "$var" | cut -c 1-3)
echo "$var2"
output- CE-

Then you can check if $var2 matches your criteria and use it further.

Answer 2

You can use cut to get the bytes that you need:

V="CE-IMPORTANT"
I=$(echo $V | cut -b 4-)

If you want to use the - as separator:

I=$(echo $V | cut -d '-' -f 2)

In both cases you get "IMPORTANT" in I var