I though we've already solved this problem in here.

if you don't have 'nawk', try using 'awk' or 'gawk'.

I think it's somewhat ..... well how should I put it ...... not elegant [maybe] to jump through so many hoops.

Have you tried using 'eval' as previously noted?

Yes works fine thank you, I did use awk! and in defense awk seems to be very specialized and really somewhat limited on what you can do or pass into the statement. This really is a easy way to by pass those limitations without having to use nawk. I mean really with 4 lines of code your not jumping thourgh to many hoops.

Please feel free to post the same thing using just awk, I would love to compare, that would help me greatly!!