Does anyone know if and how I can get awk to do a >= (less than or equal) on a value entered from a terminal by the user? E.G. echo 'enter date in format yy-mm-dd \c $dt' read dt echo $dt awk '$5 >= $dt ' .suspfile >xout awk seems to ignore the terminal entered data. Is there any way to get awk to recognize this kind of variable? ed daly ddaly at amc-hq