bash, extract string before a colon

Try this in pure bash:

FRED="/some/random/file.csv:some string"
a=${FRED%:*}
echo $a

Here is some documentation that helps.

cut -d: -f1

awk -F: '{print $1}'

sed 's/:.*//'

Another pure BASH way:

> s='/some/random/file.csv:some string'
> echo "${s%%:*}"
/some/random/file.csv

This has been asked so many times so that a user with over 1000 points ask for this is some strange
But just to show just another way to do it:

echo "/some/random/file.csv:some string" | awk '{sub(/:.*/,x)}1'
/some/random/file.csv

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