doc's for awk say the FS can be set to a regexp. I want FS to split fields on spaces, tabs, etc and '/'. I've tried FS = "[:space]\/" = "[[:space:]\/]" = "[\ /]" = "/[[:space:]/]" = "/[[\/[:space:]]" and loads of combinations thereof.. just can not get it to fscking do what i want.. arrgggg.. help --paulj obLinux: it's gawk on RedHat Linux.