Hi all, I am trying to cut the last field in myPath=/home/aby/asdf/newDir I want to sprune it to myDir=/home/aby/asdf and assign "temp=newDir" Wondering if cut can do it or is there a better way thru' awk. Thanks, abby

Hi Abby, hope this helps: echo "/home/aby/asdf/newDir" | awk 'FS="/" {print $(NF) }' No RSIK no fun Frank

Try printing your PATH variable in this format: temp=${PATH##*/} This will set $temp to the value after the last /. Using awk for this purpose is overkill. Jerry

abby wants to isolate myPath into two segments. Adding to Jerry's approach: myDir=${myPath%/*} temp=${myPath##*/} The unix commands dirname and basename are made just for this purpose: myDir=`dirname $myPath` temp=`basename $myPath` However, these commands take more cpu time, so I prefer the built-in commands above, assuming that you can use ksh.