As often stated: one can do that, but be aware that in a strict sense you can't do it by regular exprerssions. For instance, in XML it is not guaranteed that tags are on the same line. They could be on different lines, in different order, etc.. Therefore any regexp-based solution short of a real XML-parser will make implicit assumptions about the format of the file which could or could not be correct.

OK, the part "9 * 0.1" is perhaps a typo and should (i suppose) read "95 * 0.1". I also understand the format of the string you cut out which containsthe relevant tags. But the command producing this string looks fishy. Can you please post a part of your input file (a few lines surrounding the part you want to cut out and parse), because i think this cutting could be done more easily.

As it is i don't think so: ksh comes in two variants, ksh88 and ksh93 and ksh88 is a strict subset of what ksh93 can do. Find out what IRIX uses, but i think writing for ksh88 should put you on the safe side.

Linux, though, is a different matter, depending on what distribution you use. SuSE 11 for instance, had a real AT&T ksh93 when you installed it and called ksh on the command line. SuSE 12, though, dropped the AT&T version from the repository completely and if you invoke ksh you get some "mksh" (which is a not-compatible clone with most ksh-features missing but some bash-features included), but it won't tell you so. I learned that a few weeks ago, when i gave a script i wrote on RHEL (which again has a real ksh when you invoke ksh) to a colleague from the Linux team and we wondered why it didn't work. So be prepared for some surprises.

I hope this helps.

bakunin