[bash] What is a unix command for deleting the first N characters of a line?

For example, I might want to:

tail -f logfile | grep org.springframework | <command to remove first N characters>

I was thinking that tr might have the ability to do this but I'm not sure.

tail -f logfile | grep org.springframework | cut -c 900-

would remove the first 900 characters

cut uses 900- to show the 900th character to the end of the line

however when I pipe all of this through grep I don't get anything

I think awk would be the best tool for this as it can both filter and perform the necessary string manipulation functions on filtered lines:

tail -f logfile | awk '/org.springframework/ {print substr($0, 6)}'

or

tail -f logfile | awk '/org.springframework/ && sub(/^.{5}/,"",$0)'

You can use cut:

cut -c N- file.txt > new_file.txt

-c: characters

file.txt: input file

new_file.txt: output file

N-: Characters from N to end to be cut and output to the new file.

Can also have other args like: 'N' , 'N-M', '-M' meaning nth character, nth to mth character, first to mth character respectively.

This will perform the operation to each line of the input file.

Here is simple function, tested in bash. 1st param of function is string, 2nd param is number of characters to be stripped

function stringStripNCharsFromStart { echo ${1:$2:${#1}} }

Usage:

sed 's/^.\{5\}//' logfile 

and you replace 5 by the number you want...it should do the trick...

EDIT if for each line sed 's/^.\{5\}//g' logfile