hey guys. every one of the above commands worked. Thanks a lot. I have instantly got the awk example from druuna/schenidz but working on sed ones from other guys. But they all work magically. My terminal shows 5 different commands which operate on the same file and give the same output. pretty awesome.

could someone please explain the command. How is it extracting it? Is it stripping <mfr_id> and </mfr_id> and leaving the digits or is it extracting the digits...and how does it differ from this one. This will help me understand the process a little bit.

Thanks.

Hi,

As usual in Linux, there's always more then one way to skin a cat :D I have learned lots from this thread thanks to the gurus here at LQ. Thanks guys.

Kind regards,

Eric

The first sed example strips out (specifically) what is known to be not wanted - it substitutes "null" for it.
The latter case ensures only non-digits start the record, and looks for a string of digits - followed by anything (which could include digits). The bit in parentheses - the string of digits in this case - is retained by the back-reference "\1".

Obvious ain't it .... :D. You have to be real careful constructing regex so you don't get unintended results. We've all been there.

@ sycamorex , druuna
it was really not meant as a full solution but rather a code snippet to point the original poster in the right direction...

and the nit-picky award goes to...