Re: Duration between two time stamps

[Chet Ramey]

On 8/19/21 1:10 AM, Tapani Tarvainen wrote:

> Incidentally, why does ${var:offset} with a negative offset result in
> an empty string when the variable is shorter than the offset? E.g.,
> 
> x=abc
> echo ${x: -6}
> 
> 
> I find that counterintuitive,

Why? It's an out-of-bounds error.

> and it'd actually be useful to
> be able to get "at most N characters from the end".

If you want that, you can use ${#x} to get the length and work from there.

-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
                 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/