Thanks t,
but the above does not work.
grep -e '^04' is ok but grep -e '^(04|05)' does not work. (HP-UX 11)
Secondly wouldnt a grp pattern file be faster than reading the file line by line and pattern matching like this  $_ =~ /^(04|05). Thanks for your input again

In reply to Re: Generating a grep command at run time by chimni
in thread Generating a grep command at run time by chimni

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