On 01/28/2017 11:45 AM, Brian Inglis wrote: >> it did put me on the right track: >> $ cygcheck -p 'mingw32-g[:punct:][:punct:]' | awk 'NR>1{$0=$1}1' > Your command is the same as: > > $ cygcheck -p mingw32-g[:ctnpu][:ctnpu] | sed '2,$s/\s.*//' Not necessarily. You forgot quotes, so depending on what is in your current directory, that glob might expand. > > ITYM: > > $ cygcheck -p mingw32-g[[:punct:]][[:punct:]] | sed '2,$s/\s.*//' Or, with proper quoting to shield yourself from globbing based on the contents of the current directory: cygcheck -p 'mingw32-g[[:punct:]][[:punct:]]' | sed '2,$s/\s.*//' -- Eric Blake eblake redhat com +1-919-301-3266 Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org