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  • Can you look at my post again and see if you have a solution for the followup question? thanks!
    – crunchybutternut
    Commented May 9, 2012 at 17:40
  • You can use cut to cut characters too! cut -c1 for example.
    – Matt K
    Commented May 9, 2012 at 17:59
  • 2
    Although this is very simple to read and write, is a very slow solution because forces you to read twice the same data ($STR) ... if you care of your script performace, the @anubhava solution is much better
    – FSp
    Commented Nov 27, 2012 at 10:26
  • 2
    Apart from being an ugly last-resort solution, this has a bug: You should absolutely use double quotes in echo "$STR" unless you specifically want the shell to expand any wildcards in the string as a side effect. See also stackoverflow.com/questions/10067266/…
    – tripleee
    Commented Jan 25, 2016 at 6:47
  • 1
    You're right about double quotes of course, though I did point out this solution wasn't general. However I think your assessment is a bit unfair - for some people this solution may be more readable (and hence extensible etc) than some others, and doesn't completely rely on arcane bash feature that wouldn't translate to other shells. I suspect that's why my solution, though less elegant, continues to get votes periodically...
    – Rob I
    Commented Feb 10, 2016 at 13:57