If the text file can have specific lines in random order, can a script be written to copy those lines in the same order? I.e. text file #1: string1 string2 text file #2: string2 string1 Now if I have something like this in the script: find string1 > newTextFile find string2 > newTextFile it will work correctly on one file but not on the other one.

I'm not quite clear on what you want to do, but, in general, FIND needs two parameters: FIND "string" FILENAME.EXT So if you want to append strings to a new output file: find "string" < file1 >> newfile find "string" < file2 >> newfile Does that help? If at first you don't succeed, you're about average. M2

Ok. So find "string1" < file1 >> newfile find "string2" < file2 >> newfile will correctly process textfile1: string1 string2 but processing textfile2 will give: string1 string2 instead of this: string2 string1 How do I also account for which line is first in the original file?

Still not clear. If at first you don't succeed, you're about average. M2

I want the lines to be found and inserted into a new file in the same order they were in original file. So whether the file has: 1 2 3 or 3 2 1 the output file should be the same. If I just do find "1" < file1 >> newfile find "2" < file2 >> newfile find "3" < file1 >> newfile for the second file (3,2,1) I'll get 1 2 3 which isn't in the original order.

Well, you're right. But what's changing the order is the way in which you are using find. If you use this set of FINDs: find "1" < file1 >> newfile find "2" < file2 >> newfile find "3" < file1 >> newfile your newfile will be in 1 2 3 order regardless of which file they were found in. If that doesn't seem to make sense maybe I don't yet get the problem. If at first you don't succeed, you're about average. M2

So is there a way to make the script process the file so the order depends on the original files, not the order of commands in the script?