Hi, I need a help. My reqmt is- say, i have a numeric string of 6 characters long, ie '123456'. I would like append the numeric string to make a nine character string by inserting zeroes(0) in the begining of the string..ie '000123456'. In a nutshell, the input and output examples are given below. Input Output '123456' ---------> '000123456' '1234567' --------> '001234567' '12345678' --------> '012345678' '123456789'---------> '123456789' Thanks for your help.. Regards, Jern

man sprintf

if i do a printf.. say echo "'"${count}"'" rowcount=`printf "%13d" $count` echo "'"${rowcount}"'" The output is shown as below: '25290672' ' 25290672' I would like zeroes inserted there.. like '025290672'. Regards, Jern

I have got the answer with rowcount=`printf "%09d" $count` Thanks to you.. Regards, Jern

In ksh, just define the variable as a left-padded integer: $ typeset -Z9 myvar $ myvar=123456 $ print $myvar 000123456