How to “cut” “less-than” sign from “diff” output?

Question

How can I cut last "<" ? Here is my output :

#20 17 03 45 * root bash /media/data/loop.sh <

and this is my command

diff filecron filecrontmp | grep "<" | head -n 1

I just want #20 17 03 45 * root bash /media/data/loop.sh for output. What command should I pipe again? I've try with xargs but nothing happen.

Answer 1

You could try the below sed command,

$ echo '#20 17 03 45 * root bash /media/data/loop.sh <' | sed 's/ [^ ]*$//'
#20 17 03 45 * root bash /media/data/loop.sh

It would remove the last space and the following characters. So your command would be,

diff filecron filecrontmp | grep "<" | head -n 1 | sed 's/ [^ ]*$//'

Answer 2

Using BASH string manipulations:

s='#20 17 03 45 * root bash /media/data/loop.sh <'
echo "${s%<*}"
#20 17 03 45 * root bash /media/data/loop.sh