how to modify the value of the variable

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi
I have a variable which holds full path to the file, for example
z=/bb/data3/f4222pdb.dta.new
I need to remove the extension .new so it would look like
z=/bb/data3/f4222pdb.dta
Is there a command to do this? This variable is used in the "for" loop later. I am in ksh. Thanks a lot -A

2 
echo $z
/bb/data3/f4222pdb.dta.new

z=${z%.+([a-z])}

echo $z
/bb/data3/f4222pdb.dta
3 
z=/bb/data3/f4222pdb.dta.new
> echo $z
/bb/data3/f4222pdb.dta.new

> echo $z | cut -d"." -f1-2
/bb/data3/f4222pdb.dta

or, doing the replacement in one command line

z=/bb/data3/f4222pdb.dta.new
z=$(echo $z | cut -d"." -f1-2)
> echo $z
/bb/data3/f4222pdb.dta
4

An even simplier solution.

$ z=${z%.new}
$ print $z
/bb/data3/f4222pdb.dta
5

newz=${z%%.new}

mv newz z