> #!/bin/sh
> xterm -e "telnet `echo ${*##telnet://} | sed 's/:/ /g'`"
[...]
> - I *think* the {} bit is awk(1),No, "/bin/sh" is not awk(1), but sh(1). =;c) [...] > If awk(1) can remove telnet:// from $* (if present), > then surely it should be able to turn a colon (if present) > into a space, right? Parameter substitution in /bin/sh can only remove characters from the beginning or the end of a string, not substitute something in the middle, see sh(1). But rather than torturing your poor sh(1), let's rather start over. First you understand your task, then you choose your tools. You need [1] non-interactive editing capabilities [2] command interpreter capabilities As sh(1) is lacking [1] and sed is lacking [2], you should really pick some other language, e.g. awk(1) or perl(1). Indeed, awk(1) has a system()-call, but i'm not fluent in awk, so let's get the job done using perl: #!/usr/bin/perl use warnings; use strict; my $url = shift; exec 'xterm','-e', 'telnet',$1,$2 if $url =~ m#^telnet://([-.\w]*?):(\d+)$#; exec 'xmessage', "$url: parse error"; On a side note, do not use exec "xmessage $url: parse error"; or surfing to telnet://localhost:1234&halt# might yield surprising results. Your sh-kludge cited above is even worse; please DO try surfing to telnet://localhost:1234&xmessage:bad:guys:got:in but do NOT try surfing to telnet://localhost:1234&rm:-rf:~
