Hello all I have been working on getting a flat file to merge two or three line into one. Below is part of a flat file I have. Jan02 AF2 Jan02 UMSA2 Jan02 AF1 Jan05 AF2 Jan05 UMSA2 Jan08 AF2 Jan08 UMSA2 Jan10 AF2 Jan10 UMSA2 Jan11 AF2 Jan11 UMSA2 Jan11 AF1 Jan12 AF2 Jan12 UMSA2 Jan13 AF2 Jan13 UMSA2 Jan14 AF2 Jan14 UMSA2 Jan15 AF2 Jan15 UMSA2 Jan16 AF2 Jan16 UMSA2 Jan17 AF2 Jan17 UMSA2 Jan18 AF2 Jan18 UMSA2 Jan19 AF2 Jan19 UMSA2 Jan20 AF2 Jan20 UMSA2 Jan21 AF2 Jan21 UMSA2 Jan22 AF2 Jan22 UMSA2 The output I was tiring to get was Jan02 AF2 UMSA2 AF1 Jan05 AF2 UMSA2 Jan08 AF2 UMSA2 and so on. The problem I am running into is reading the file with a while loop and being able to compare the next line. Any Help would be great.

Hi, try #!/bin/ksh infile=input.txt prev=" " { while read first rest do if [ "${prev}" = "${first}" ] then echo "${rest} \c" else prev=${first} echo echo "${prev} ${rest} \c" fi done } $infile not tested but it should do it. No RISK no fun Frank

Thank you so much works great