On 2010-02-14 17:04 +0100, John Salmon wrote: > Is there a way to change the field seperators in Bash's read command > (Debian Lenny)? Yes, see the IFS variable (look it up in the bash manpage). > I could use gawk to do what I need but, since gawk isn't > installed in the Lenny distribution, I'de rather use something that is. Huh? The FS variable works in any AWK implementation, not just gawk. Sven