sed + delete the third char from line

Question

the following sed syntax delete the first @ character if exist in string

 sed 's/^@\(.*\)/\1/'

How to change the follwoing sed syntax in order to delete the third character? For example :

In the following line I need to delete the third character @

 line=AB@CDEF

sed syntax need to verify if the third character is: @ and if it true then to delete the @ from the line

Yael

Answer 1

You can use

sed 's/^\(..\)@\(.*\)/\1\2/'

Answer 2

To generalize for any character at any given position n:

sed 's/^\(.\{2\}\)./\1/'

which deletes the third character. Just change the number "2" to n-1.

You can use a variable like this:

n=2
echo "$line" | sed "s/^\(.\{${n}\}\)./\1/"

Answer 3

% sed -e '/^..@/ { s,^\(..\)@,\1, }'

means:

• if line starts with 3 characters, the third is a '@'
• throw out the @, but keep the first chars