hi i hav a question,suppose i hav a variable like var="12,134,13" now i want to put 12 134 and 13 in a seperate variable.i want to ask how to i replace delimiter and then put these nos in a seperate variable. like var containing of 12 134 and 13 then i can iterate using for loop for i in $ var echo $i Regards Abhishek hi my question is abt scripting. i want to find the diffrence in two dates. dates are in /var/log/messages Mar 27 05:48:02 abhargav sshd[1151]: Apr 2 15:31:17 abhargav sshd[1151]: no

Hi: The easiest way is to change the internal field separater, IFS, and use the set command to do the parsing: var="12,134,13" set - $(IFS=","; echo $var) echo $1 echo $2 echo $3 If you insist on using a loop, this works: #!/bin/ksh var="12,134,13" OFS=$IFS IFS="," for i in $var do echo "i is: $i" done IFS=$OFS # restore original IFS