> m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote: >> >> Simpler, and more obvious to read: >> >> /sbin/ifconfig eth0 | awk '{if ( $0 ~ /inet addr:/ ) {print >> substr($2,6)}}' > > That's only obvious to the couple of people who speak awk... (Probably > about the same number that use the C shell that started this problem). > > With more generic regexps it would be: > > ifconfig eth0 |sed -n -e 's/\(.*inet addr:\)\([0-9.]*\)\(.*\)/\2/p' Right, and that's obvious to the meanest intelligence, while "if what I read in has this, then print this part of that field" is sooo complicated. Are you willing to agree to differ, and stop attacking me, when I give one awk script to replace 3-4 commands? mark