Extract substring in Bash

Question

Given a filename in the form someletters_12345_moreleters.ext, I want to extract the 5 digits and put them into a variable.

So to emphasize the point, I

Answer 1

A bash solution:

IFS="_" read -r x digs x <<<'someletters_12345_moreleters.ext'

This will clobber a variable called x. The var x could be changed to the var _.

input='someletters_12345_moreleters.ext'
IFS="_" read -r _ digs _ <<<"$input"