hi, i am new to this...i need to find a method to extract or display only certain fields for eg: show network gives the fields like product, node and address.... how can i get only the address?? thx

As noticed in my earlier reply, I'm using lexical functions to get the information needed. A lexical function is no a command, it is a subprogram that you can use. $ HELP LEXICALS STR = "This is just a textstring" I can look at the string "str" as a textstring or as a list of words separated by a space. A = f$extract(8,4,str) I extract 4 characters starting at character 8 from the string represented by the symbol "str". A = "just" or A = f$element(2," ",str) I get the second element in the list (str) with delimiter " ". There are a lot of examples in the HELP-utility. Let the lexicals be your best friends. regards, Hakan Zanderau HA-solutions

Ooooops,.... f$element starts at element 0..... f$element(2," ",str) will extract the third word

isint this complicated to extract fields from output which are all across the screen....is there a easier way to extract the fields like the cut or awk we use in unix

I'm not a frequent UNIX-user so I don't know how "awk" or "cut" work.......... Please explain more about your problem. regards, Hakan Zanderau HA-solutions

Gawk and Perl for OpenVMS are listed on the official freeware page. Go to www.hp.com/go/openvms and look for the "OpenVMS Resources column". Hakan makes an important point about learning the lexical functions. In OpenVMS, parsing a command output for information is usually a last-ditch approach. I always look for logical name or a lexical function that gives the information I want. (That said, I haven't found a good one for DECnet address!)