I know that grep the_specified_string myfile can finds a line that contains a specified string in a file. How can I reach the same goal in a korn shell script? Thanks a lot for your help! Mei

#!/bin/ksh grep $1 myfile There is precious little the korn shell does by itself but it is a wonderful glue.

Get a copy of "The New Kornshell" by Morris I. Bolsky and David G. Korn. On page 276 is a version of the grep command written in Kornshell. You can use the logic in the example as a start point. It is essentially an exercise of opening a file, reading in each line and using the Kornshell's builtin pattern matching ability. I completely disagree with the previous comment that there is precious little the Kornshell does by itself. I have rewritten many scripts and removed unnecessary awk and sed statements from them. Looking at the examples in the book I referenced, one would find the previous statement to be less than accurate. Jerry