OK so i'm trying to assign something to a variable... heres what i'm trying to do This command works fine outside of the script ($month and $day are assigned already) cat test |grep "$month $day" |grep "Savegroup: (notice) Oracle completed, 1 clients(s) (All Succeeded)" | awk '{ pri nt $1,$2, $9, $11, $13, $14 }' i want to do like a b= the above line but no matter how i put it in the script i always get some error ot it doesn't seem to work, i've tried putting "'s around it and ()'s but still no luck.... What am i doing wrong here guys, is it just not possible to assign that to a variable? Thanks in advance Lucas

Some more info, using the actual location i will be pulling info from. b=(cat /nsr/logs/messages |grep "$month $day" |grep "Savegroup: (notice) Oracle completed, 1 clients(s) (All Succeeded )" | awk '{ print $1,$2, $9, $11, $13, $14 }') I've tried that and tried replacing the outter () with "". I'm new to this so i'm unsure of if that proper or not. Error i get: May 7 Oracle 1 client(s) (All Succeeded) bd2.ksh[13]: syntax error at line 13 : `(' unexpected Thanks, Lucas

One tip, get rid of cat, just use grep "$month $day" /nsr/logs/messages You would need to put ` around the thing you are trying to do. So b=`grep "$month $day" /nsr/logs/messages|grep "Savegroup: (notice) Oracle completed, 1 clients(s) (All Succeeded)"|awk '{print $1,$2, $9, $11, $13, $14 }'`

Alternatively ksh version of `expression` is $(expression), which can be more flexible as it nests better.