Kwan wrote: > On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 4:48 AM, Roland RoLaNd <r_o_l_a_n_d at hotmail.com> > wrote: >> >> i've just wrote the following : ^^^^^ written >> >> more ./*.csv | grep -i XXX | echo "Dear XXX, This email is for >> informative purposes. Your total number of hours for the week of `date` >> is: `cut -d, -f2` hours Kindly note that the average weekly working >> hours is : 40." | /usr/sbin/sendEmail -t mail at domain.com -u Test email- >> disregard it -f othermail at subdomain.com -s smtp.domain.com:25 <snip> >> 1. i have to fill the name for each person in place of XXX as well as >> their MAIL at domain.com >> 2. the date command gives the hour as well which is a bit annoying >> >> can anyone guide me on how to proceed? <snip> > :D I had a similar assignment once.. The cleanest approach is to use > awk instead of grep and cut. With awk you can specify fields in the > input as $2, $3, etc.. Yep. awk's the tool you want (I can hear the perl Is The Answer believers yelling <g>). awk -v DATE=`date` -f yourscript.awk would pass the system date in. Beyond that, the script's incredibly simple, if all your data is in the .csv, and all on one line. The final email could be sent either by doing cmd = "echo " awkvariable " | email -s woohoo " $<whatver field number the username is>"; system cmd; or you can have awk print it out, and pipe the output of awk through mail. I think the former's cleaner. mark