BTW what does [ sed -e "s/^\([^,]*\).*$/\1/" ] accomplish? I'm just grooving on one liners lately and am curious. It seems like - awk -F : '{print $5}' /etc/passwd is all you need to spit out the full names.Not quite the same thing: $ awk -F : '/karsten/ {print $5}' /etc/passwd Karsten M. Self,,,$ awk -F : '{print $5}' /etc/passwd | sed -e "s/^\([^,]*\).*$/\1/"Karsten M. Self
Or, if you only know awk... awk -F : '/Brian/ {print $5}' /etc/passwd | awk -F , '{print $1}' The former looks much cooler, though. :-) -- Brian J. Stults Department of Sociology University of Florida Box 117330 Gainesville, Florida 32611-7330 phone: (352) 392-0265 x286 fax: (352) 392-6568 e-mail: bstults@soc.ufl.edu