Shell Programming and Scripting

can we use pipes to redirect the output of any command to grep .....
like i wanted to write this script about checking the online status of a certain user so ...can i send the output of who to grep directly using pipes...
one way was this :
who > temp
grep $uname temp

i was wondering if there is an alternative way to combine these two in to one command
hey i am a total newb so sry if my doubts seem lame
thnx..newaz

you can do like this :
who | grep $uname

Shihab

hey thanks for the prompt reply pal....so this can be generalized for any command tht takes two ommand line arguments like grep??
newaz got another one...is there an equivalent in unix for the split() function in perl
thnx a ton

Most unix commands (where its sensible) read from the standard input stream and write to the standard output stream by default and therefor can be happily strung together with pipes.

There is no direct equivalent of the split function in perl. However it is 'sort of' catered for by the 'for' command. Its probably best to read up on shell scripting rather than have me try to explain how it works. Check the FAQ section.

This is a excellent link originally posted by Vino, I think... you will get whatever you need about scripting in ksh.