In mylog.log has File Description Status PID1 Testing1 Active PID3 Testing2 NotActive PID7 Testing3 NotActive PID8 Testing4 Active PID9 Testing5 NotActive How do I write a script to extract information from mylog.log, let says just Description and Status? I want to write a script that gives me the flexibility to choose which column to present to me. If I typed D and S, I will get the description column and Status column Description Status Testing1 Active Testing2 NotActive Testing3 NotActive Testing4 Active Testing5 NotActive =================Second Part================ With the same log, how would I reconstruct the data into more meaningful script? Let say, If PID exist, I want it to tells me in a more meaningful way. If I do grep PID1, I would be getting PID1 Testing1 Active I want the to return to me as the following. PID1 is at Active Status for Testing1.

Look at cut for the first portion and ps -ef | grep $pid for the second. Piping the ps command through cut or awk will probably help you.