Dear all I have an awk script as below. I would like the script to do the if condition based on the number that pics from the subsrt command and then compare with the number that I set for the comparision. #!/bin/sh for i in DX* ; do echo $i | awk '{ if ( substr($1, 28, 3) < 10 && substr($1, 36, 3) > 20 ) print "jun_"substr($1, 24, 4)}' >> out done Now, I have a file of the form: -----2_2003001-2003031----- Here the substr pics 001 for the first condition and 031 for the second condition. But my script does not able to pic this file , which apparently does not recognise that 001 is less than 10 and 031 is greater than 20. How one can fix this problem ? You may propose that to pic the last character of "001" but the files runs from 001 until 335. I would appreciate if you could help ! Regards Yacob

The problem is that you are comparing a character string to an integer. This awk stub fails: echo ""|awk ' { if ("065" < 10) print "its less than 10" else print "its greater than 10" } ' With awk, adding zero performs a numerc conversion. Here is a fix: echo ""|awk ' { if ("065"+0 < 10) print "its less than 10" else print "its greater than 10" } ' In your case you can probably do something like this: if ( (substr($1, 28, 3)+0) < 10 && (substr($1, 36, 3)+0) > 20 )