Hi, I have a file in the format of a listing of item numbers in one column in the (*.xls) -excel file. I would like to have an output in a different format. example: my input will be in the form HEDM-5600#J06 HEDM-5605#B06 HEDM-5605#J06 HEDM-6120#T06 HEDM-6120#T12 and I want an output in the form 'HEDM-5600#J06','HEDM-5605#B06','HEDM-5605#J06','HEDM-6120#T06','HEDM-6120#T12' where it is prefix with an ' and end with an ' and items are seperated with commas(,). I would like a unix script to handle this job. Please help. Regards, Jern

Everything on a single line? awk ' {printf "%s\047%s\047",comma,$1  comma=","} END {printf "\n"} ' myfile

Thanks a lot Jim, that works... Regards, Jern

Hi Jim, Can you please explain me the awk listings? eg, 047. thanks. Regards, Jern

The \047 is not particular to awk, but instead basic unix (do man echo). You can represent any ascii character (printable or not) using a backslash followed by the numerical octal value. That was just one way for me to get the single-quotes hardcoded into my output.

Regarding printf (formatted print), this is also common to unix. You can execute printf commands from the unix prompt (man printf). In the awk printf below, the format mask (in double-quotes), specifies:    col for 6-char string (min)    constant string ": "    col for number (show 2 dec)    constant string " GB"    newline (end-of-line term) Following the format mask, I must feed it two values to populate the two columns (represented by the % formats).  In this case, the first value is the second word of the line, and the second value is a mathematical expression. echo 13463240 /u01 | awk '{printf "%6s: %6.2f GB\n",$2,$1/1024}'  /u01: 13147.70 GB

Thanks a bunch, Jim. Regards, Jern