How to delete everything in a string after a specific character?

Question

Example:

    before: text_before_specific_character(specific_character)text_to_be_deleted
    after: text_before_specific_character

I know that

Answer 1

If TEXT contains your text, as in

TEXT=beforexafter

and the specific character happens (for example) to be x, then

echo "${TEXT%x*}"

does what you want.

To Bash, "$TEXT" or "${TEXT}" is the whole beforexafter, but "${TEXT%xafter}" is just before, with the xafter chopped off the end. To chop off the x and anything that might follow it, one writes "${TEXT%x*}".

There is also "${TEXT%%x*}", incidentally. This differs from the other only if there is more than one x. With the %%, Bash chops off all x, whereas with the % it chops off only from the last x. You can remember this by observing loosely that the longer %% chops off more text.

You can do likewise with Sed, of course, if you prefer:

echo "$TEXT" | sed 's/x.*//'