canito at dalan.us wrote: > In the process of writing a script which I would like to count the > number matched patterns (command line parameters). I think your approach can be refined. The `grep' family of commands would certainly work here, but not necessarily in the way you're envisioning. There are two basic forms of using grep grep -c PATTERN FILE COMMAND_OUTPUT | grep -c PATTERN The `-c' option gives you count, but only in terms of lines that match, not necessarily in terms of every matching instance. cat << EOMSG | grep -c ONE ONE, TWO, THREE ONE, ONE ONE TWO, ONE, ONE EOMSG will result in an answer of 4 rather than 6. Remember, counting lines rather than instances. If instances on a single line are important, such as with argument strings, you could do some pre-formatting tricks to still use grep. echo "ONE TWO ONE THREE ONE FOUR" | sed -e 's/[[:space:]]/\n/g' | \ grep -c ONE The `sed' command will replace all white space with newlines, allowing you to count lines to find matches in your arguments. There are other ways to skin this cat (pun intended) with shell-fu, but these are simple and easy to grep... (I can't stop.) Chad -- Chad Walstrom <chewie at wookimus.net> http://runswithd6s.blogspot.net/