I have sequencing data which I want to trim from 3' end to retain first 20 bp not on based on quality. Most of the tools ask for qulaity and and then trim. Is there any way I can just trim reads to keep first 20 bases. This data is for matching bar codes with standard format which is embedded in first 20 bp.
Maybe you used fastq_quality trimmer instead of fastx_trimmer?
Because as you can see from the help output above, it does not need any quality threshold.
Possible duplicate: Trimming a fastq file representing RNA-seq data. Seqtk works with fasta and the awk oneliner also works.