Tony Molloy wrote: > 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. > Ah, but are you sure they're not just dropped out for a term, or about to become indentured servants, er, grad students? In that case, maybe just change their login shell to /bin/noLogin mark