A very short perl script? You could have perl print the links to stdout or have it call wget for you. As a one liner... perl -ne \ 'm/^ ab (1) cfd (2) egb (3) chd (4) eib (5) cjd (6) ek $/x \ and print "$1\n$2\n$3\n$4\n$5\n$6\n"' \ < data Scott Raun wrote: > I've got a file. The file has one line of interest. Alpha characters > represent fixed strings, numbers represent variable strings. > > ab1cfd2egb3chd4eib5cjd6ek > > I'm pretty sure I can write myself a regular expression that will > correspond to the numbered strings. What I need is a tool that will > pass the matched string along to standard out. > > Suggestions? > > To put it in slightly less obscure terms - the line represents a > string of html code. The numbers represent hypertext links and their > matching text. I want to watch for a specific text string, and pass > the corresponding link to wget. I think I've got all the pieces > figured out _except_ passing the link to wget. >