Actually it could be any command that will work with an old version of HP UX, but peferably awk. I have a text file with multiple fields seperated by a semicolon. For the nth field, I need to delete any number after the 3rd character. I've come up with this line but it won't work since it isn't a fixed length. awk -F";" '{gsub("...$","",$6);print}' I feel that I am close to finding the solution, but need a bit of help. (Sorry freakzilla, the message was meant for the list.) Thanks in advanced, Saul David Alanis