You have two files, one is the list of all files and the other is a list of files to exclude? all_files is the 1st, exclude is the second: for a in `cat exclude` do grep -v "$a" all_files > temp.$$ cp temp.$$ all_files done That's off the top of my head. There's a much easier way to do this but it eludes me right now (actually there are tons of ways to do this, the beauty of bash!). Test this first, I just pulled it straight out of thin air and haven't checked it. Adam Maloney Systems Administrator Sihope Communications On Mon, 11 Sep 2000, Mike Glaser wrote: > I am working on a shell script to run a tape backup for one of my servers and I > have a small problem. > > Since I am using cpio, I first generate list of all files on the server with the find > command. Then I want to go back and remove any directories that meet a > certain pattern (like ' ^ \ /proc \ / ' ) that is included in another 'exclude' file. I > thought of one way to do that using 'grep -v .... > somefile.txt' > > My problem is, how do I read in the list of excluded directories from a file and > pass that to grep? I guess I don't understand redirection and shell > programming enough to solve my problem. I could figure out a solution with > Perl, but I must write te code in a bash script. > > This is what I have now, but it doesn't work... > grep -v file.txt < cat exclude_list.txt > new_shorter_file.txt > > If anyone could help me out I would appreciate it! > Thank-you, > Mike Glaser > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: tclug-list-unsubscribe at mn-linux.org > For additional commands, e-mail: tclug-list-help at mn-linux.org > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: tclug-list-unsubscribe at mn-linux.org For additional commands, e-mail: tclug-list-help at mn-linux.org