This should be an easy one, but for some reason I can't find the docs I need. In a bash script, how do you store the return of a program into a variable? For instance, I have a dat file: 001 002 003 004 005 006 I want to store the 006 into $six. I thought I could do something like: six=tail -n1 numbers.dat but that didn't work. What am I missing? Also, is there a way I can use a sed command to strip off the leading 00? TIA!!! -Brian