check variable content size in sh script

[Quartz]

> However, if the OP wanted to actually truncate $FOO to 51
> characters:
>
> NEWFOO=$( echo "$FOO" | awk -v max=51 '{print substr($0,0,max)}' )

You don't need all that for a simple truncation/substring, you can do it 
with a direct assignment:

newfoo=${foo:0:51}

The three params here are "variable", "start position" and "length".

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