I need to be able to grab the first character in record1 of a file and see if it is the number "1". I then need to grab the first character in record2 of the same file and see if it is the number "9". I can write simple scripts, but this is a new one for me. Is AWK the way to go? (I am also new to AWK) Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. An example of what a portion of the file could look like is shown below. FILE1 190876465 49494474646 59 595757 {rec1} 90 345667 5753457390 222 {rec2}

One thing that I forgot to add is that I only care about the first character in the first two lines/records. I don't need to read the rest of the file if there happens to be more than 2 lines/records in it. Thanks, Scott

So, if I am reading this right, you only need the first character of the first 2 lines correct? If so head -2 FILENAME | cut -c 1 Would give you 1 9 If you need to separate them, use either: | head -1 or | tail -1 at the end That should work just fine.

Thanks LANkrypt0. I feel silly now to see how simple that was. By the way, it worked great! Scott

No problem. I too have overcomplicated things many times, only to realize later on that some little line of code would have produced the same thing. You learn as you go. Glad it worked for you.