wwp wrote: > On Wed, 15 Aug 2012 15:22:10 +0100 Tony Molloy <tony.molloy at ul.ie> wrote: >> >> I'm looking for a command to extract lines from a large text file, a >> password file. A typical user has a username made from a letter >> followed by their id-number. >> >> m9718508:pw:9301:840: Lynch :/home/pgstud/m9718508:/bin/bash >> >> So for instance if I need to extract lines where; >> the 1st field, the username begins with an m >> and the 4th field, the group contains exactly 850 >> >> cat passwdfile | grep ^m | grep 850 > output >> >> is close but fails if the value 850 appears outside the 4th field. In >> the above example which should be ignored 850 appears in the username >> and home directory and is therefore extracted. > > Something like `grep -E '^m.+:.*:.*:850:'` maybe? Complicated. awk '{ if ($1 ~ /^m/ && $4 == "850" ) { print $0;}}' /etc/passwd mark "awk! awk!*" * No, I'm still not a seagull....