Your script is slowed down considerably because of on average 5 calls to external programs and subshells for each line of the input file, which adds up to 50,000 (!) calls with the 10,000 line input sample in post #1 .

Instead of :

Code:

record_type=`echo $record | sed 's/\(^....\).*/\1/'`

try

Code:

record_type=${record%"${record#????}"}

And for all the expr statement in the case statement, you can use ksh's arthmetic expansions:

For example instead of

Code:

a2=` expr ${a2} + 1 `; a3=` expr ${a3} + 2 `

try:

Code:

a2=$(( a2 + 1 )); a3=$(( a3 + 2))

and instead of

Code:

a7=` expr ${a7} + 1 `; a5=` expr ${a5} + 3 `

try:

Code:

a7=$((a7 + 1) ; a5=$((a5 + 3))

and so on for all the other lines with ` expr ...` statements

--
Also instead of

Code:

cat test2.tlog | while read  line1
do
  line_no=` expr ${line_no} + 1 `
  process_each_record  ${line1}
done

You can try:

Code:

while read line1
do
  line_no=$((line_no + 1))
  process_each_record "${line1}"
done < test2.tlog

Note that there should be double quotes around $line1 to avoid unintended field splitting and wildcard expansions by the shell

If you do this throughout the script, then this will result in zero calls to external programs and or subshells and this should bring a dramatic performance gain..

--
yet another option - but that is a matter of taste - is to not cut off the first four characters, but instead use the case statement's pattern matching:

Code:

case $record in
  1111*) 
    foo
    ;;
  1112*)
    bar
    ;;
...