Base Knowledge : I have a .crt file ( certification authoritie file ) and he is composed of many fields but in one line that resumes this question i have this : Certificate: ...(alot of stuff before)... Subject: C=US, ST=Maryland, L=Pasadena, O=Brent Baccala, OU=FreeSoft, CN=www.freesoft.org/[email protected] Subject Public Key Info: ...(alot of stuff after) and i need to parse the file to populate a .csv file and i have that done the problem that i need help is, i need to get the field: CN=www.fresoft.org but when i get this kind of CN=...(Value instead of the ...) with alot of slashes i get a error in the parsing like the raw string is: CN=foo/bar/the/hell/emailAddress=blablabla and i need only: foo/bar/the/hell and for a moment i got that in the correct column but when i dont have the emailAddress something just fail in my parsing and i then get in my CN .csv column the information wrong instead of |CN| foo/bar/the/hell i get: |CN| OU=FreeSoft, foo/bar/the/hell. I have this code doing the CN parsing: #!/bin/bash subject_line=$(echo $cert | grep -o "Subject:.*Subject Public Key Info") cn=$(echo $subject_line | grep -o "CN=.*" ) if [ $(echo $cn | grep -c ".*email.*") -gt 0 ]; then end_cn=$(echo $cn | grep -b -o emailAddress) end_cn_idx=$(echo $end_cn | grep -o .*:) final_end_cn=${end_cn_idx:0:-1} common_name=${cn:3:$final_end_cn-4} echo $common_name else end_cn=$(echo $cn | grep -b -o "Subject Public Key Info") end_cn_idx=$(echo $end_cn | grep -o .*:) final_end_cn=${end_cn_idx:0:-1} common_name=${cn:3:$final_end_cn-5} echo $common_name fi