All, I have a CSV like file that uses the octal single byte char 024 (or cntrl-T) as a comma and 0376 as a quote char and . I need to strip off the last column and discard it, so I thought I could use awk to do it something like. export FS='\024' awk '{print $1,$2,$3}' my_file > my_output It seems to still be useing a space (' ') as the field separator. Any idea what I'm doing wrong? I've also tried FS='\\024' FS='\0376\024\0376' FYI: This may be a one time need and it is only about 500 lines, so using vi to manually do it is acceptable, but the text within the quotes can be very long, so it is hard to work on visually. The good news is that cntrl-T (\024) should never appear within any of the actual fields. Thanks Greg -- Greg Freemyer Litigation Triage Solutions Specialist http://www.linkedin.com/in/gregfreemyer First 99 Days Litigation White Paper - http://www.norcrossgroup.com/forms/whitepapers/99%20Days%20whitepaper.pdf The Norcross Group The Intersection of Evidence & Technology http://www.norcrossgroup.com -- Greg Freemyer Litigation Triage Solutions Specialist http://www.linkedin.com/in/gregfreemyer First 99 Days Litigation White Paper - http://www.norcrossgroup.com/forms/whitepapers/99%20Days%20whitepaper.pdf The Norcross Group The Intersection of Evidence & Technology http://www.norcrossgroup.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org