Sorry I meant Korn and the '*' stands for anything.

The set -o vi method produced :
Version M-11/16/88

The print ${.sh.version} method revealed to be unrecognized

teh what /bin/ksh | grep Version method revealed nothing. There is an output but no word version in it.

The records content looks like :

S(xx,xx,xx,xx,xx,xx,xx,xx,xx,...,xx,xx,999,yy/\mm/\dd,...

where the 'S' is a letter being D, A or S
where the 'xx' is either any text within commas or can be empty (meaning ,, )
where 999 is a command number
where 'yy/\mm/\dd' is a date with the '/\' characters

to my understanding, the amount of comma separated fields are constant but do not have to have data in them so they can be empty. Is it possible to do a grep search according to n-number of fields (comma separated) with some of those fields having specific values ?

my search criteria for the moment, is the command number and the date

As programing language, there only seams to be C, Bash and Korn. No Perl or anything else.