On Wednesday 15 August 2012 19:46:42 Les Mikesell wrote: > On Wed, Aug 15, 2012 at 1:26 PM, Tony Molloy <tony.molloy at ul.ie> wrote: > >> ]$ cat testcentoslist | egrep ^m.*:.*:.*:850: > >> m9718308:pw:9301:850: Lynch :/home/pgstud/m9718508:/bin/bash > > > > Exactly what I needed. I'll just drop the cat as a later poster > > pointed out. > > sed -n -e '/pattern/p' can match anything grep would do and might > be even more useful if you want substitutions for subsequent use. > And of course perl can do anything sed can do, and then some... > True true, and of course C could do anything and everything ;-) But all I need is a simple script which will be run once a year to remove the graduated students from the password file. Regards, Tony