Mark, Thanks thats what I was looking for... Jerry Jerry Geis wrote: >/ I am trying to use cut to tell me the suffix of a file. />/ for example: echo /home/silentm/log/file.machine.log | cut -d . -f 1- />/ />/ I was expecting to get .log or log but I get the entire string echoed back. />/ />/ doing the opposite gave me what I expected: />/ echo /home/silentm/log/file.machine.log | cut -d . -f 1 />/ gives me />/ /home/silentm/log/file />/ />/ I am trying to find a way to test if the file ends in .log? / Awk will do it: # echo /home/silentm/log/file.machine.log | awk -F. '{print $NF}' log The benefit of awk is that you don't have to know how many dots are in the file. $NF just prints the last one. -Mark