m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote: >> 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? > It wasn't an attack - and the one sed command does the same thing with an even more lightweight program. And perl could do it without running ifconfig. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com