shell - How to cut a string after a specific character in unix

Question

So I have this string:

[email protected]:/home/some/directory/file

I just want to extract the directory address meaning I only want the bit after the ":" character and get:

/home/some/directory/file

thanks.

I need a generic command so the cut command wont work as the $var variable doesn't have a fixed length.

Answer 1

Using sed:

$ [email protected]:/home/some/directory/file
$ echo $var | sed 's/.*://'
/home/some/directory/file