I've a variable inum= 14232232345 I need to parse the variable so I can count 1+4+2+3+2.........= 45 thanks,

Hi: I think you're asking to parse and add each character. If so, isn't the string above actually equal 31 and not 45? Here's a ksh method: #!/bin/ksh i=0 d="14232232345" while [ ! -z $d ] do x=$(echo "$d"|cut -c1 ) ((i=$i+$x)) d=$(echo ${d##?} ) # keep removing first char done echo $i

And here's a one-line solution: expr $(echo 14232232345|sed 's/\(.\)/\1 + /g')0

Jim: That's an excellent solution - especially if I understood what you were doing. Would you mind explaining it, please. Nails

Sorry 'bout that ... I use sed to change each character to that character followed by space and +, which gives you 1 + 4 + 2 + ... because expr requires all operands to be space delimited.

Jim: I get it: the \( and \) saves any match - a single character in this case, and then uses the back reference, \1, to print the match plus adding a plus sign: sed 's/\(.\)/\1 + /g' Then you add a "0" to properly terminate an arithmetic statment before using the result as a parameter to the expr command. Very COOL! With ksh, you can make a slight mod and assign the result to a variable using eval: eval "((i=$(echo 14232232345|sed 's/\(.\)/\1 + /g')0))" Thanks for the lession. Nails

Perhaps the sed expression can be simplified slightly, since we are only replacing one pattern: expr $(echo 14232232345|sed 's/./& + /g')0 or using ksh arithmetic: echo $(( $(echo 14232232345|sed 's/./& + /g')0 )) or just for fun, let n=14232232345 total=0 while (( n > 0 )) do     (( total += n%10 ))     (( n/=10 )) done print $total