Hi, I am new in UNIX programming. I would like to achive the following tasks. could someone advice me? 1) extract the data from comma separator string and placed into arraylist. 2) for every data in the arraylist, scan the log file to find the last date time timestamp that matches with the content in the arraylist name1=data1,data2,data3 desired output: arraylist[1]=data1 arraylist[2]=data2 arraylist[3]=data3 thanks Eileen EILEEN CHUA

Assume bash and timestamp in field 1 of log file. # # Set array # IFS=, arraylist=($name1) # # Search log file for elements of array # for word in "${array[@]}" do    grep "$word" log_file | cut -f1 done # # The same thing without loop # grep -E "$(IFS='|'; echo "${array[*]})" log_file | cut -f 1 Jean-Pierre.

Try reading the UNIX man pages on strtok. It's great for parsing strings with separators. RadarSync-We drive you happy!