Guys, You need a break from all the 11.2 buzz. Many probably already have this, but for those that don't, put them in your toolbox. There is nothing new about needing to trim whitespace from either the beginning or end of a variable, but what is remarkable is the way the following two simple parameter substitutions work. (They take staring at for a while) The main benefit is there are no wastefull calls to sed (like using a sledge hammer to swat a fly) and there are no checks required to determine if whitespace exists on the front or backend of a string (No more: strln=${#1}; [[ ${1:$((strlen-1))} == ' ' ]] && ...) and no more loops th count characters. Take a look and save them where you can find them again. I ran across them on codesnippets.joynet.com: http://codesnippets.joyent.com/posts/show/1816 VAR="${VAR#"${VAR%%[![:space:]]*}"}" # remove leading whitespace characters VAR="${VAR%"${VAR##*[![:space:]]}"}" # remove trailing whitespace characters If you think about it, that is the perfect way to do it. You determine the exact type and number of leading or trailing whitespace and then you remove just those characters (but all in one compact line). I have seen this somewhere before, but I wasn't smart enough to save it. Won't happen this time :p -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org