I am sure someone already sent this reply and I missed it. Anyway, if I understand the original problem correctly, you want to find instances of "\t\t00:00:00" and "\t\t\t\t\t\t\t00:00:00", etc. and remove them. I hope this is generic enough so you can change it to fit your needs: echo "Start c 00:00:00crap here." | sed "s/\([^ ]*\)[ ]\+[0-9][0-9]:[0-9][0-9]:[0-9][0-9]\(.*\)/\1\2/g" This will find an instance of "nn:nn:nn" only when preceded by more than one tab. Perl is easier to read, so here is a perlish version: echo "Start c 00:00:00crap here." | {perlish} "s/([^\t]*)[\t]+\d\d:\d\d:\d\d(.*)/$1$2/g" Troy > > There are oh-so-many ways, as I am sure people will tell you. regular > expressions are the most wonderful things for such a task. I am comfortable > with tcl, so I would read the file into a tcl variable and use 'regsub -all > {\t700:00:00} $instring {} outstring'. > > There are unbelievably simple, unvbelievably fast ways to do this in one line > from the shell using sed, but I don't speak sed. I suspect someone will hook > you up with some basic sed. > > Try this in Windows. Visual Basic can use regular expressions, but you have to > instantiate a regular expression object, then execute one of it's methods to do > anything. Ugh. > > Ian > > Josh Berkus wrote: > > > Folks, > > > > I need to strip certain columns out of my pgdump file. However, I > > can't figure out how to use any Unix-based tool to search-and-replace a > > specific value which includes a tab character (e.g. replace "{TAB}7 > > 00:00:00" with "" to eliminate the column). > > > > RIght now, I'm copying the file to a Win32 machine and using MS Word > > for the search-and-replace, but I'm sure there's got to be a better way > > ... *without* learning VI or Emacs. Help? > > > > -Josh > > > > ______AGLIO DATABASE SOLUTIONS___________________________ > > Josh Berkus > > Complete information technology [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > and data management solutions (415) 565-7293 > > for law firms, small businesses fax 621-2533 > > and non-profit organizations. San Francisco > > > > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- > > TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster > > > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- > TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://www.postgresql.org/search.mpl