Bash - get n first characters from string

in this article, we would like to show how to get first N characters from some string in Bash.

Quick solution:

echo "123456" | head -c +3

Where: +3 indicates amount of the characters to get.

Output:

123

Practical example

In this section, you will find a reusable function that gets a text.

#!/bin/bash

function get_text()  # args: text, count
{
    echo "$1" | head -c "+$2"
}


# Usage example:

count=3
text="123456"

result="$(get_text "$text" "$count")"

echo "$result"   # 123

See also

1. Bash - cut n first characters from string