Paul Christidis asked:
>Given the following:
>OPT="d=#paulc f=STAGE t=Staging Area flist='/usr/tmp/paulc_34433:4656'"
>
>Could someone suggest the magic words (sed, cut, etc..) that 
>would remove
>everything AFTER the word "Area ".
>
>The 'key' string is " flist='"

If you are using KSH, BASH or MPE's POSIX shell, and OPT is a shell
variable that does not have the [double] quotation marks (") in it you
can drop the "flist=" and everything after that using ${OPT%flist=*} to
dereference the variable.  If you also want to drop the blank before it
(and know it will always be present) you would use ${OPT% flist=*}

Inside a shell variable reference ${OPT} you may use any of several
operators to modify the results; these include % and # which delete a
pattern from the right or left respectively of the result.  Double %%
and ## delete as much as possible whereas the single % and # versions
delete as little as possible.  Examples:

${SomePath}             -> a/b/c/d/e
${SomePath#*/}  -> b/c/d/e
${SomePath#*/c} -> /d/e
${SomePath##*/} -> e
${SomePath##*/c}        -> /d/e
${SomePath%/*}  -> a/b/c/d
${SomePath%c/*} -> a/b/
${SomePath%%/*} -> a
${SomePath%%c/*}        -> a/b/

If you can't use "flist" as your key but want to use "Area" and still
leave "Area" in the result, you can use "${OPT%Area *}Area".
--
Jeff Woods
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Quintessential School Systems

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