Hi all, I need your help. I have the following input files: file1: T02349,Apple,3434 T24230,Blue,12390 T09398,Tennis,67567 file2: Blue,Green Tennis,Golf I need a script that will: 1) extract the string populated in field 2 of file1 2) if string from 1)can be found in the first field in file2, extract the corresponding string from the 2nd field from file2. Then replace field 2 of file1 with this extracted string. 3) if string from field 2 of file1 cannot be found in file2, leave the line unchanged. In my example, the expected output will be: T02349,Apple,3434 T24230,Green,12390 T09398,Golf,67567 I appreciate your help.

Looks suspiciously like homework!

#! /bin/ksh cat file1 | while IFS=, read num1 word num2 ; do if grep $word file2 > /dev/null 2>&1 ; then print "${num1},`grep $word file2 | cut -d, -f2 `,${num2}" else print "${num1},${word},${num2}" fi done > output

Hi Jimbo, Your script works. Thanks a million!