IFS= read -r a while IFS= read -r b do echo "$a" f="$b" g="$f" done echo "$a" c=`echo "$a"|sed -r 's/T.+$/T/'` d=`echo "$g"|sed -r 's/K.+$/K/'` printf "$d" printf "*%.s" `eval echo {1..$((${#c}-${#d}))}`