ok thanks to everyone so far; bakunin for the loop/read help, and hard aix; using your examples made me realize I have an error in my C code.
a contingency I did not realize was a possibility, filtering stuff that should not be filtered. the orig sortlist2.txt file has 14655 entries to sort through so it is a long file.

Here is a different section from the sortlist2.txt file:


Here is an example how the filter should work:


here is how the sortlist3.txt should look:


and the rmlist.txt would have the removed entries to be used later with the rm command:



So from a C standpoint i would need to, if the previous logout is the same as the one currently being read, then isolate the name from the directory and compare names also.

so from bash i would need to replace the / with a space to create 3 arguments per line, do the comparisons. but keep the / in the outputted lists.

and finally here is how the sortlis2.txt is being generated:

Code:

#!/bin/bash

rm blahlist.txt;
for adirfile in `cat -s adir.lst`
do
   echo -e "\e[0m adding list from \e[31m $adirfile \e[36m\n\n";
   grep  -m 1 LogO $adirfile/* >> blahlist.txt;
done

   echo -e "sorting list...\n\r";
   sort -g -k 2 blahlist.txt > sortlist.txt;

   echo -e "removing grep data...\n\r";
   sed  's/:LogO//' sortlist.txt > sortlist2.txt;
   echo "$" >> sortlist2.txt;
   echo -e "\e[0m";