Pete Walters said: > Here's a horribly quick hack: > > echo "(sf-hiper1a-099.dialup.slip.net [216.185.29.99])" | \ > sed -e s/"[A-Za-z0-9.( -]*\["//g -e s/"\][\)]*"//g > > I didn't say it was pretty! My solution for getting the numeric address is a bit simpler... sed -e "s/.*\[\(.*\)\].*/\1/