List, Happy NY. >From the bash command below, I'm trying to parse out the startsector value: $ sudo file mini_vusb.img mini_vusb.img: x86 boot sector, Microsoft Windows XP MBR, Serial 0x25d84; partition 1: ID=0xe, active, starthead 1, startsector 32, 390496 sectors First try was with grep/egrep but I wanted to capture 'startsector 32' as a group (). Nothing came close to working. Fail 1 Next attempt was with Perl file mini_vusb | perl -lane '$i=0 ;for (@F) {print substr($F[$i+1],0,-1) if ($_ eq "startsector"); $i++}' the above works, but it's too much fire power for the job :) Actually I came up with it in a minute or two once I remembered the special var @F. Success 1 Last effort led to this $ sudo file mini_vusb.img | grep -Po 'startsector\s+\d+'| grep -Po '\d+' 32 I like this best. Is there a way to shorten it up? -- Mark