I have a problem finding out the username of the following strings:
"/usr/home/craigf/scripts/exec" or "/usr/home/craigf" knowing that if
there are directories listed after the username, they may change. I
only need to find out in whose directory I am.

But in front of the username there is always /usr/home/ and it is
sometimes followed by a "/", sometimes the username is the last
characters of the string (ie: /usr/home/craigf)
How can I extract "craigf" from these strings using sed or awk?
If you could me that would be great.
Thanks in advance,

Craig.

FC wrote:
> I have a problem finding out the username of the following strings:
> "/usr/home/craigf/scripts/exec" or "/usr/home/craigf" knowing that if
> there are directories listed after the username, they may change. I
> only need to find out in whose directory I am.
>
> But in front of the username there is always /usr/home/ and it is
> sometimes followed by a "/", sometimes the username is the last
> characters of the string (ie: /usr/home/craigf)
> How can I extract "craigf" from these strings using sed or awk?
> If you could me that would be great.
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Craig.

This should work

pwd | cut -d "/" -f4

On 2006-12-05, FC wrote:
> I have a problem finding out the username of the following strings:
> "/usr/home/craigf/scripts/exec" or "/usr/home/craigf" knowing that if
> there are directories listed after the username, they may change. I
> only need to find out in whose directory I am.
>
> But in front of the username there is always /usr/home/ and it is
> sometimes followed by a "/", sometimes the username is the last
> characters of the string (ie: /usr/home/craigf)
> How can I extract "craigf" from these strings using sed or awk?

You don't need sed or awk (or any external command).

dir=$PWD ## or whatever; used in examples below

If the string you want is always the third element in the path:

IFS=/
set -f
set -- $PWD
user=$3

(Reset IFS and perhaps set +f afterwards.)

If it is the last element, with or without a trailing slash, and
perhaps no leading path elements:

dir=${dir/}
case $dir in
*/*) user=${dir##*/} ;;
*) user=$dir ;;
esac


--
Chris F.A. Johnson, author <http://cfaj.freeshell.org/shell>
Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (2005, Apress)
===== My code in this post, if any, assumes the POSIX locale
===== and is released under the GNU General Public Licence

FC wrote:
> I have a problem finding out the username of the following strings:
> "/usr/home/craigf/scripts/exec" or "/usr/home/craigf" knowing that if
> there are directories listed after the username, they may change. I
> only need to find out in whose directory I am.
>
> But in front of the username there is always /usr/home/ and it is
> sometimes followed by a "/", sometimes the username is the last
> characters of the string (ie: /usr/home/craigf)
> How can I extract "craigf" from these strings using sed or awk?
> If you could me that would be great.
> Thanks in advance,
>

Extract from the string:

echo "/usr/home/craigf/scripts/exec" |
awk -F/ '/^\/usr\/home\// {print $4}'
or
echo "/usr/home/craigf/scripts/exec" |
sed -n 's#^/usr/home/\([^/]*\).*#\1#p'
or
expr "/usr/home/craigf/scripts/exec" : '^/usr/home/\([^/]*\).*'

Maybe it is more precise to look for the file owner:

ls -l "/usr/home/craigf/scripts/exec" | awk '{print $3}'

--
Michael Tosch @ hp : com