we are ftping zipped up files from the development server to the production server daily.The files are in this format filename.dat.20061231.12131.gz

I have to unzip the file (i can do that with gunzip) and then strip out the timestamp after the .dat extension.

I can do something like this

print $line | awk -F"." '{ print $1,$2}' and assign it a variable and then rename the file accordingly.But thats not generic..can anyone please suggest a way to just strip of all the characters after .dat .Thanks


Mervin