Easy Bash Cut Delimiter

Question

I have this..

$input = "echo     a       b                c   d"
echo -e "$input" | cut -d " " -f 2-

but I just want a simple cut that will get rid of echo as well as print

a b c d #(single space) only

Answer 1

echo -e "$input" | tr -s ' ' | cut -d " " -f2-

Also gets rid of the 'echo'.

Answer 2

You don't need any tools besides what bash provides built-in.

[ghoti@pc ~]$ input="echo     a       b                c   d"
[ghoti@pc ~]$ output=${input//  / }
[ghoti@pc ~]$ echo $output
echo a b c d
[ghoti@pc ~]$ echo ${output#* }
a b c d
[ghoti@pc ~]$ 

Up-side: you avoid the extra overhead of pipes.

Down-side: you need to assign an extra variable, because you can't do complex pattern expansion within complex pattern expansion (i.e. echo ${${input//  / }#* } won't work).