Dear Maurice: I noticed your complex expression:
The relevant part of the output is (with some air interspersed)
cd p/rts && c:/djgpp/bin/make.exe CC="`echo c:/djgpp/gnu/gcc-2.952/build.djg/gcc /xgcc -Bc:/djgpp/gnu/gcc-2.952/build.djg/gcc/ -Bc:/djgpp/i586-pc-msdosdjgpp/bin/ -Ic:/djgpp/i586-pc-msdosdjgpp/include' ' | sed -e 's,-B\([^/][^:]\),-B../../\1, g;s,^\([^/][^:]*\),../../\1,'`" PC="`echo ./xgpc -B./' ' | sed -e 's,-B\([^/][^: ]\),-B../../\1,g;s,^\([^/][^:]*\),../../\1,'`" SHELL="c:/djgpp/bin/bash.exe" CFL AGS="-O2" AR="ar" AR_FLAGS="rc" RANLIB="ranlib" RANLIB_TEST="[ -f ranlib ] || ( [ "i586-pc-msdosdjgpp" = "i586-pc-msdosdjgpp" ] && [ -f /usr/bin/ranlib -o -f /b in/ranlib ] )" RTSFLAGS="" DESTDIR="../.." all Even with the space it is hard to get through! So I thought of mentioning a trick I use: the backslash to break the lines into logical units: cd p/rts && c:/djgpp/bin/make.exe CC="`echo c:/djgpp/gnu/gcc-2.952/build.djg/gcc /xgcc -Bc:/djgpp/gnu/gcc-2.952/build.djg/gcc/ -Bc:/djgpp/i586-pc-msdosdjgpp/bin/ -Ic:/djgpp/i586-pc-msdosdjgpp/include' ' |\ cat |\ sed -e 's,-B\([^/][^:]\),-B../../\1, g;s,^\([^/][^:]*\),../../\1,'`" PC="`echo ./xgpc -B./' ' |\ cat |\ sed -e 's,-B\([^/][^: ]\),-B../../\1,g;s,^\([^/][^:]*\),../../\1,'`" SHELL="c:/djgpp/bin/bash.exe" CFLAGS="-O2" AR="ar" AR_FLAGS="rc" RANLIB="ranlib" RANLIB_TEST="[ -f ranlib ] || ( [ "i586-pc-msdosdjgpp" = "i586-pc-msdosdjgpp" ] && [ -f /usr/bin/ranlib -o -f /b in/ranlib ] )" RTSFLAGS="" DESTDIR="../.." all Well, that's not much better (yet) but the idea is to do things like this: cat my.file |\ tr -d 0-9 |\ sort |\ uniq |\ sed -e "s/this/that/g" |\ cat > my.result The nice thing about this method is that one can easily see the steps, and it is easy to rearrange and modify. (Of course one must not have any spaces after the backslash!) Regards, Tom Dr. Thomas D. Schneider National Cancer Institute Laboratory of Experimental and Computational Biology Frederick, Maryland 21702-1201 toms@ncifcrf.gov permanent email: toms@alum.mit.edu http://www.lecb.ncifcrf.gov/~toms/