bash print substring of a field
# Basic syntax:
awk 'BEGIN {FS="input_delimiter"; OFS="output_delimiter"} {print substr($column_number, start_character, number_characters)}' input_file
# Where:
# - BEGIN {FS="input_delimiter"; OFS="output_delimiter"} is for setting
# the input and output field/column delimiters
# - column_number is the field for which you want a substring
# - start_character is the number of the first character from the left
# (inclusive) that you want to incude in the substring
# - number_characters is the number of characters to print past the
# start character (inclusive)
# Example usage:
# Say you had a file like the following and only want the ID #s:
customer info ID:123456 account
customer info ID:172327 account
# Running:
awk 'BEGIN {FS="\t"; OFS="\t"} {print substr($3, 4, 6)}' input_file
# Would return:
123456
172327