Hi, I am trying to write a script which will output files that are numbered. My draft script is this: #!/bin/sh LIST1=$1 LIST2=$2 for f in $(cat $1) do grep $f $2 > $2_???? done What I want is for all output files to be numbered e.g o1, o2, o3 etc etc, one for each line of input file $1. I am sure the answer is very simple but I cannot find it as I am a novice. Thanks, Christina

You can use expr.

#!/bin/shLIST1=$1LIST2=$2i=0for f in $(cat $1)do  grep $f $2 > $2_$i  i=`expr $i + 1`done

Hope this helps.