Passing Bourne Shell var into cut command

Question

I am trying to do the following.

foo="foo:foo1"
cc= `$foo | cut -f2 -d:`

I understand why this would not work but I am at a loss as to do this.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Try this:

foo="foo:foo1"
cc=`echo $foo | cut -f2 -d:`

There are 2 changes to make:

• You need to echo the value of shell variable foo and then cut it.
• You must not have white spaces around = when assigning a value to a shell variable.

Answer 2

in bourne, you can use set. No external command needed.

$ foo="foo:foo1"
$ IFS=":"
$ set -- $foo
$ echo $2
foo1