Red Hat

I need to parse through the following file and extract the BIG02 field.
ISA*00* *00* *01*069737914 *01*044760643 *101018*1002*U*00401*000084892*0*P*>~GS*CI*069737914*044760643*20101018*1002*84892*X*004010~ST*811*1 5924~BIG*20101013*00309788216101013*****DI~REF*ZZ*VRZNBIZ~REF*12*00309788216~REF*AP*00309788216~ITD* 18*****20101112~DTM*186*20101013~DTM*187*20101112~N1*PR*INTERMEDIA COMMUNICATIONS~N3*6

for example, i need the value 00309788216101013.

Any ideas on how to do this with a kornshell script?

Well, UNIX command line utilities 'cut -d '*' -f 123 ' is available to all languages. It's amazing how often I see "PERL" code that has `shell-out-for-some-trivial-command`.

In ksh, you can loop (while read line ; do . . . done) read the lines with 'read env_var_name and cut out each leading field with $(line#*"*"} (Mnemonic: # is a not-greedy (single) nose eater that pounds on the nose) and then all trailing fields with ${line%%"*"*} (Mnemonic: %% gets a greedy (double) percentage off the end) as an exercise, but why?