Re: how to drop last N characters from string?

On 04 Dec 1997 15:21:25 +0200, <jari(_dot_)aalto(_at_)poboxes(_dot_)com> wrote:
>         VAR = "1234567890"
>         :0
>         * VAR 123\/.*
>         {
>             rest = $MATCH
>             Now I want to cop off "90" from $rest ?
There is no easy general way to accomplish this. Real backreference
grabs would be nice to have, but for now, your only option seems to be
to figure out a way to limit the match, or pass the result to sed for
finishing touches. 

>     Also what's the procmail way to increment variable by N ?
Scoring is one way to do math:

    VAR=15

    :0
    * $ $VAR^0
    * $ $N^0
    { }
    VAR=$=

will assign 20 to VAR if N is 5.

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