This probably is not helpful, but anytime I need to play with text files I use FreePascal. FreePascal is compiled code, of course, so no script mess. If you need 100 lines of code, it still compiles to one command name of your choosing. And FreePascal has some special capabilities with text files and strings that seem to now be incorporated into even the Arduino "wiring" programming language. Some of that old stuff has re-emerged because it works very well. All I know is I can create my own functions, and not rely on what I think somebody else's functions do. I doubt current FreePascal releases work on HP UX, but I bet HP UX had a Pascal that was quite nice. canito at dalan.us wrote: > Actually it could be any command that will work with an old version of > HP UX, but peferably awk. > > I have a text file with multiple fields seperated by a semicolon. For > the nth field, I need to delete any number after the 3rd character. > > I've come up with this line but it won't work since it isn't a fixed > length. > > awk -F";" '{gsub("...$","",$6);print}' > > I feel that I am close to finding the solution, but need a bit of help. > > (Sorry freakzilla, the message was meant for the list.) > > Thanks in advanced, > Saul David Alanis > > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list >