Simple bash question

Can anyone tell me how i can get the string -rw-r--r-- to be seperated in -, rw-, r-- and r--?

I think i have to use sed but am not sure

Help would be appreciated.

results=( `echo "-rw-r--r--" | sed 's/\(.\)\(...\)\(...\)\(...\)/\1 \2 \3 \4/'` )
echo ${results[2]}

--> "rw-"

alter 2 to any number between 0 and 3 to get the component parts.

hope that helps -mike

Great, thanks!!!!

Now i can finally move on.