Ubuntu – Extract word from string using grep/sed/awk

awkbashcommand linegrepsed

I have a string 

00:28:04 /usr/lib/jvm/jre/bin/java -DJDBC_CONNECTION_STRING= -Dspring.profiles.active=qa -XX:MaxPermSize=256

and want to extract the word qa that follows -Dspring.profiles.active.

I have the string save in a file text.txt just to demo on it.

When I do 

grep -r -o "spring.profiles.active=" text.txt

The result is spring.profiles.active=

This word does not always be qa, it could be prod or dev.

What I'd like to do is find the word spring.profiles.active and after the = extract that word.

I would like to shell script this because I use the word to configure other items on the server.

Is this possible and if so, how do I do it.

Best Answer

You can use grep with PCRE (-P):

grep -Po 'spring.profiles.active=\K[^ ]+' <<<'.....string.....'

  • spring.profiles.active= will match this substring literally, \K will discard the match

  • [^ ]+ will select the desired portion i.e. the portion after spring.profiles.active=, till the next space

For a file:

grep -Po 'spring.profiles.active=\K[^ ]+' file.txt

Example:

% grep -Po 'spring.profiles.active=\K[^ ]+' <<<'00:28:04 /usr/lib/jvm/jre/bin/java -DJDBC_CONNECTION_STRING= -Dspring.profiles.active=qa -XX:MaxPermSize=256'
qa

sed would take similar logic:

sed -r 's/.*spring.profiles.active=([^ ]+).*/\1/' <<<'.....string.....'

Example:

% sed -r 's/.*spring.profiles.active=([^ ]+).*/\1/' <<<'00:28:04 /usr/lib/jvm/jre/bin/java -DJDBC_CONNECTION_STRING= -Dspring.profiles.active=qa -XX:MaxPermSize=256'
qa

Handling errors:

In your script you may want to handle the case where there is no match, in other words where your original string does not contain spring.profiles.active=. In the above sed example, you obtain the whole original string, which could create problems:

% var="$(sed -r 's/.*spring.profiles.active=([^ ]+).*/\1/' <<<'00:28:04 /usr/lib/jvm/jre/bin/java -DJDBC_CONNECTION_STRING= -XX:MaxPermSize=256')"
% echo $var
00:28:04 /usr/lib/jvm/jre/bin/java -DJDBC_CONNECTION_STRING= -XX:MaxPermSize=256

If you prefer to obtain the empty string when there is no match, add the -n option to the sed command and the p option to the sed s command, like this:

% var="$(sed -rn 's/.*spring.profiles.active=([^ ]+).*/\1/p' <<<'00:28:04 /usr/lib/jvm/jre/bin/java -DJDBC_CONNECTION_STRING= -XX:MaxPermSize=256')"
% echo $var

% var="$(sed -rn 's/.*spring.profiles.active=([^ ]+).*/\1/p' <<<'00:28:04 /usr/lib/jvm/jre/bin/java -DJDBC_CONNECTION_STRING= -Dspring.profiles.active=qa -XX:MaxPermSize=256')"
% echo $var
qa

Then you can test if $var is empty or not.

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