Steven W. Orr wrote: <snip> : Why use grep or pr or any other shellout when you can just do it right : from within bash? : : myRead() : { : typeset line1, line2, line3 : read line1 : read line2 : read line3 : echo "$line1 $line2 $line3" : [[ -n "$line1" && -n "$line2" && -n "$line3" ]] : } : while myRead : do : : : done < /usr/share/dict/words I could be wrong, but to answer your question: 1) Because `pr --columns=3' is a whole lot easier to type than what you suggest 2) Because what you suggest has a bug, at least on my machine. When I run it, I get ==>./foo ./foo: line 3: typeset: `line1,': not a valid identifier ./foo: line 3: typeset: `line2,': not a valid identifier ./foo: line 3: typeset: `line1,': not a valid identifier ./foo: line 3: typeset: `line2,': not a valid identifier ./foo: line 3: typeset: `line1,': not a valid identifier ./foo: line 3: typeset: `line2,': not a valid identifier ./foo: line 3: typeset: `line1,': not a valid identifier and so forth 3) Because your suggestion would give the opposite of what I would expect if I were asked to turn the following into three columns: a b c d e f g h i j k l I would want: a e i b f j c g k d h l Yours will give: a b c d e f g h i j k l Dean -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list