Patrick Nelson wrote: ----------------->>>> For some reason I just cant get this... me@mehost>setap -l | grep ESSID: # lists the following lo no wireless extensions. eth0 IEEE 802.11-DS ESSID:"MECOOLAP01" Nickname:"mehost" me@mehost> I'm trying to figure out how to pull the MECOOLAP01 from the line. Any suggestions? ----------------->>>> 2 Methods of doing this... one using cut and sed: setap -l | grep ESSID: | cut -f 2 -d ':' | cut -f 1 -d ' ' | sed -e "s/\"//g" And another using pattern-matching and extraction power of expr ESSId=$(expr "$(setap -l | grep ESSID)" : ".*ESSID:\"\([^ ]*\)\"")