Name:

  The name derivates from "Strip A Word".

Purpose:

  I wrote this to simplify scripting while I was dealing with
  logfiles. Usage is within scripts. 'saw' deals with arguments
  only. I can see no relevance in interactive use.

  If You don't do scripts, You probably don't find any use in
  this "utility".

Template:

  saw <word_number> <string>

  'word_number' is a number from 1 and up to 999.

  'string' is the literal string or a variable that contains
  a number of words from which a particular word is searched.

Results:

  The word is output to stdout and can be redirected to a file
  or used to set a variable. A trailing newline is not appended
  intentionally. I didn't want that as it can be used to extract
  a word that is to be joined with other files where a newline
  is not desired. If You need a newline You redirect the output
  to a variable and use ECHO which append a newline character
  for You.

  If You point to a word beyond the list, a word_number that is
  higher than the number of words, 'saw' exits with a warn and
  give no output. See examples below for usage.

  If word_number is not a numeric positive integer You'll have
  a WARNing and not a FAIL.

Examples:

  ---------

  The ENV:vehicles contains "car train boat bike":

    # saw 3 $vehicles >vehicle
    # more vehicle
    boat
    #

  ---------

  The same contents in ENV:vehicles:

    # saw 3 $vehicles
    boat#

  ---------

  Example, fictive logfile excerpt:

    6.12.99 1:15:32 pppd: Local IP 123.234.3.56 recieved

  If You want the IP adress for insertion in an html document,
  in a script You could write something like:

    set ipstring `search <logfile> "Local IP" nonum`
    saw 6 $ipstring >ip  ; from the example above -> 192.168.1.15
    if warn              ; something went wrong
      quit               ; so we bail out
      endif
    join head ip tail to myaddress.html
    unset ipstring

  ---------

  'saw' could also be used to test for a number of words in a string:

    set fruit banana apple orange pineapple pear
    saw 6 $fruit >nil:
    if warn
      echo "There is less than 6 fruits."
      quit
      endif
    echo "There is 6 fruits or more."

  ---------

So what? I use "ECHO START=32 LEN=12 NOLINE".

  Well, in some cases the length of some words are not static
  and tests which could be tedious and error prone would have
  to be performed by the script.

 PERMSSN    UID  GID    PACKED    SIZE  RATIO     CRC       STAMP          NAME
---------- ----------- ------- ------- ------ ---------- ------------ -------------
[generic]                 4238    6440  65.8% -lh5- c169 Aug 13  2000 saw/saw
[generic]                 1225    2546  48.1% -lh5- 61d4 Aug 13  2000 saw/saw-1.0.readme
---------- ----------- ------- ------- ------ ---------- ------------ -------------
 Total         2 files    5463    8986  60.8%            Aug 16  2000