On Sat, Jan 03, 2009 at 07:36:04PM -0600, Rob Landley wrote: > On Saturday 03 January 2009 06:28:22 Ingo Oeser wrote: > > > +for i in "MSEC 1000" "USEC 1000000" > > > +do > > > + NAME=$(echo $i | awk '{print $1}') > > > > cut -d' ' -f1 does the same > > > > > + PERIOD=$(echo $i | awk '{print $2}') > > > > cut -d' ' -f2 does the same > > From a standards perspective > http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/cut.html vs > http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/awk.html is probably > a wash, but from a simplicity perspective using the tool that _isn't_ its own > programming language is probably a win. :) Vagaries of 'cut' aside you can limit yourself here to just shell: set_name_period () { NAME=$1 ; PERIOD=$2 } for i in "MSEC 1000" "USEC 1000000" do set_name_period $i .... done or you may skip a shell function and do 'set $i' within a loop plus assignments of $1 and $2 to NAME and PERIOD but that overwrites original positional parameters (which may be already not important). Michał -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-embedded" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html