Filipe Brandenburger wrote: > Hi, > > On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 10:48, Jerry Geis <geisj at pagestation.com> wrote: >> I am trying to create a script that takes an entire file, >> drops the first 19 characters from each line and creates a new file. >> newline=`echo $LINE | cut -f 19-` > > What you want is "cut -c 19-" (-c as in characters) and not "cut -f > 19-" (-f as in fields). > >> echo $newline >> output.txt > > This will also remove the spacing. You should at least use echo > "$newline" >>output.txt, but in any case it's silly as you can just: > > cut -c 19- <test.txt >output.txt Or sed -e 's/^...................//' <text.txt >output.txt which might be a nicer starting point if you want to make other changes although it won't change a line with less than 19 characters. If you'd want that, 's/^.\{1,19\}//' should do it. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com