begin Tim locke quotation: > grep "..\/..\-..\:..\:" oos.txt | cut -d \> -f 1 | > cut -d \ -f 2 | cut -d \: -f 1 | sed s/\ //g | sort | > uniq -c | sort -nr > oos.log
How do you expect anyone to know what's wrong with it if you don't tell us what you expect it to do? The main comment I have about this thing is that it's nearly unreadable because rather than properly quote things, you escape everything in sight, including things that don't need to be escaped. The computer may not care one way or the other, but humans attempting to read this are at a disadvantage. Here's something I think (without actually testing) is functionally equivalent, but much easier to read: grep '../..-..:..:' oos.txt | cut -d '>' -f 1 | cut -d ' ' -f 2 | cut -d ':' -f 1 | tr -d ' ' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr > oos.log So, what will this do? Grep oos.txt for lines containing any two characters followed by a slash, followed by any two characters, followed by a dash, followed by any two characters, followed by a colon, followed by any two characters, followed by another colon; matching lines are piped to cut, which outputs only the text prior to the first greater-than; the result is then piped to another cut, which outputs only the text between the first and second space characters; then another cut, which outputs only the text prior to the first colon; then all space characters are removed. The final result of all this is then sorted, uniqued (with counts added), sorted again (reverse, by frequency), and written to oos.log. Whether this is what you want is quite unclear, since you didn't bother to tell us what you want, or how the script is failing. The utter lameness of that fact accounts for the poor temper of this reply. A general note on script debugging: If you aren't getting what you want out of a script, especially a complex pipe like this one, try testing the individual components to figure out what isn't working. Just do the grep, first. Do you get the lines you expect? If so, add the first cut, then the second, and so on, confirming at each stage that you are getting what you want. Craig -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
