On Thu, 2020-07-23 at 10:49 -0400, Jerry Geis wrote: > Sorry - I see it now "remove the cat". > > Thanks "All" for the suggestions. I wasnt aware of the method to > avoid the > cut command. > Here's a few "historical" observations on this thread. 1) Your original script looks like you were trying to write to the syntax of the old Bourne ( sometimes called "boring" ) shell. In the olden days of Unix in the 20th century, that was the ONE shell you could reliably expect to be present on the target machine. 2) You are now using Bash ( Bourne-Again SHell ) which is obviously an evolutionary development and is much more capable. It has SO much more capabilities that ( as others have pointed out ) it can do many things with internal functions that used to require other tools ( "cat", "expr", others ) to accomplish. 3) You write scripts in a similar fashion to the way I do it. Plenty of whoopsies and typos along the way to debug. Since I'm now an old geezer from the prehistoric times of Unix, I still stick to the old thumb rule "The man page is your friend" that some people seem to be forgetting these days. Just my $0.02 (US) worth. > Jerry > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos -- Ron Loftin reloftin at twcny.rr.com "God, root, what is difference ?" Piter from UserFriendly