This is all well and we try to help as much as we can. The reason why most of us insist that a genuine effort in solving the problem by oneself is made is because we try to help you to help yourself. Most of us, me included, are professionals and we get paid to do for customers what we help each other to achieve here. The big dfference between writing here and doing work for a customer is: i do not expect my customer to spend any effort - i expect him to pay me for doing his work instead. Here it is the other way round. I do not expect to get paid - not in the narrower sense, obviously, but not even in a virtual sense, like "being paid by recognition" or using what i do here to advertise my skills, but on the other hand i expect my vis-a-vis to spend some effort to digest what i try explain to him and to try to learn what i explain.

Otherwise i have to ask myself why i charge my customer some money for my work when i do it for free here.

But there is - or at least should be - another reason for you to invest effort in solving your problems: whenever you work using a certain tool there is a dialectical connection between the work and the tool: the tools is shaped by the work you expect it to do but also your work is shaped by the tools you use. You sure know the saying that if you only have a hammer everything starts to look like a nail. This the tool shaping the work and the way the work is done. So, when you do your work using a computer as a tool you will not only be able to do it better when you are more competent with it but chances are you will be changing the way you work and you may find new applications to the tool or ways of applying it which you are not aware of right now.

After so much philosophical contemplation here is a practical suggestion for you: most of your problems seem to involve "data massaging" of one sort or the other. Most (perhaps all) of what you do can be done using awk and/or sed. There is a phantastic book about exactly these two tools: it is written by Dale Dougherty and i can wholeheartedly suggest it. It is a good and diverting read while being the best and most complete single source about the topic i ever read.

bakunin