Bash String Operatinos

Remove the last four characters in a string
echo "somefile.txt" | awk 'sub("....$","")

Remove file extension from a string
ls -1 | sed 's/\(.*\)\..*/\1/'

Remove PREFIX from SOMEPATH
SOMEPATH="/home/myuser/usr/bin/"
PREFIX="/home/myuser/"
echo ${SOMEPATH#$PREFIX}
Returns: usr/bin/

Remove shortest match of PREFIX from SOMEPATH
SOMEPATH="/home/sub/subhome/myuser/usr/bin/"
PREFIX="/*/myuser/"
echo ${SOMEPATH#$PREFIX}
Returns: usr/bin/

Parsing parts of a file:
foo=/tmp/my.dir/filename.tar.gz
To get: /tmp/my.dir (like dirname)
path = ${foo%/*}
To get: filename.tar.gz (like basename)
file = ${foo##*/}
To get: filename
base = ${file%%.*}
To get: tar.gz
ext = ${file#*.}

Removing first 8 characters of a string:
echo $var | cut -c9-

http://unstableme.blogspot.com/2008/03/printremove-first-some-characters-of.html
http://tldp.org/LDP/LGNET/18/bash.html
http://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/unix/upt/ch09_07.htm
http://unstableme.blogspot.com/2007/12/removing-last-two-characters-bash.html
http://www.unix.com/shell-programming-scripting/40360-remove-file-extension.html