Shell Programming and Scripting

When it works, great! Looks fine (but I'm not a awk specialised, you know ;-)
I will test it tomorrow.

Regards,
Martin

$ cat file1
otto:***LOCKED***:....
Sven:7hfd7ihd7fd:....
Mueller:*:....
Tanja:ukjs7i437jd:....
Klaus:*TTT*:
$ awk -F: '$2 !~ "\*"' file2
awk: 0602-521 There is a regular expression error.
?*+ not preceded by valid expression.

The source line number is 1.
The error context is
$2 !~ >>> "\*" <<<
$ awk -F: '$2 !~ "*"' file2
awk: 0602-521 There is a regular expression error.
?*+ not preceded by valid expression.

The source line number is 1.
The error context is
$2 !~ >>> "*" <<<
$ uname -a | cut -d" " -f 1,3-
AIX 3 4 0001BA0F4C00

Mine was tested and works on HP-UX 11i. I guess the exact syntax varies from system to system.

Indeed - I think something like

awk -F: '$2 !~ /\*/' file

should solve most syntactical woes - does on my Linux boxes anyway!

EDIT:
Anyway - I'd use my friend sed! (only tested on Linux and UNICOS 9.0 this evening...)

Code:

sed '/^[^:]*:[^:]*\*[^:]*:.*$/d' my_passfile

I get the expected output of (using sample data) of...
Sven:7hfd7ihd7fd:Comment ***! :
Tanja:ukjs7i437jd:No Asterix here:


Cheers
ZB

Great, I also get the needed output.
I should learn moe about the great tool awk ...

Martin