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Date: Sat, 18 May 2013 11:09:02 -0400
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To: Devin Teske <dteske@freebsd.org>
Subject: Re: check variable content size in sh script
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Cc: Tim Daneliuk <tundra@tundraware.com>, "Teske,
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> However, if the OP wanted to actually truncate $FOO to 51
> characters:
>
> NEWFOO=$( echo "$FOO" | awk -v max=51 '{print substr($0,0,max)}' )

You don't need all that for a simple truncation/substring, you can do it 
with a direct assignment:

newfoo=${foo:0:51}

The three params here are "variable", "start position" and "length".

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