Since I found this very helpful forum and friendly people, I have a small request. I use AIX Unix and would like to know if there's a simple way how to do a kind of compare between two files. I have 2 text files, let's name them file1 and file2. What I need: I want to read line by line file1 - certain field or better 2 fields of the file1 and look up the information in the file2. To be more descriptive: I'd like to extract field1 at position 10-15 and field2 at position 25-31 from file1 and search or find if the same information is somewhere inside the file2. When no, I'd like to output the field1 & field2 off the file1 doesn't exit in file2. let's say file1 contains something like: 123232 3232 2323 2323123123213 trterert and file2 e.g. 123232 3232 2323 2323123123213 XXXXXXXX and let's say I want 123232 & trterert from file1 to be searched in file2 ==> I get an "error" because the script would find only 123232 and not trterert..... I'd be more than happy if someone can help me out or recommend a link or appropriate command or script. I just need to check some record(s) in one file - and if they're available in the other file... Please! Thanks a lot! Marian

AIX contains all the *NIX utilities: ksh, sed, awk, etc. What is your experience in *nix shell programming? in PERL?

Sorry, I have no experience with programming - that's my pity! :-( Can you help me out? Thanks! Marian