To read specific path string from generation of curl result(SED/AWK/Grep)

If you have gnu grep then you can use a PCRE regex like this:

curl -s http://localhost:8080/stances/1/Dirs | grep -oP '"WorkerInstanceRunDir":"\K[^"]+'/opt/links/stances/2

Details:

• "WorkerInstanceRunDir":": Match literal text "WorkerInstanceRunDir":"
• \K: Reset matched info
• [^"]+: Match 1+ non-" characters

If you don't have gnu grep installed then use this sed:

curl -s http://localhost:8080/stances/1/Dirs |sed -E 's/.*"WorkerInstanceRunDir":"([^"]+).*/\1/'

Since OP can't install jq, following could be tried with shown samples. But this could not be full fledge, this is completely as per shown samples only.

awk 'match($0,/"WorkerInstanceRunDir":"[^"]*"}/){print substr($0,RSTART+24,RLENGTH-26)}' Input_file

Explanation: Using match function to match regex "WorkerInstanceRunDir":"[^"]*"}, which will match everything from "WorkerInstanceRunDir till next occurrence of " followed by } then printing sub string starting from RSTART+24 till value of RLENGTH-26 here.

OR try setting field separators as per shown samples only.

awk -F'"|}' '$(NF-5)=="WorkerInstanceRunDir"{print $(NF-3)}' Input_file