<> == How do I get the sum of all the numbers in a column? == This and all similar questions are best answered with an [[AWK]] one-liner. {{{ awk '{sum += $1} END {print sum}' myfile }}} A small bit of effort can adapt this to most similar tasks (finding the average, skipping lines with the wrong number of fields, etc.). For more examples of using {{{awk}}}, see [[http://www.pement.org/awk/awk1line.txt|handy one-liners for awk]]. === BASH Alternatives === {{{ # One number per line. sum=0; while read -r line; do (( sum += line )); done < "myfile"; echo "$sum" }}} {{{ # Add numbers in field 3. sum=0; while read -r -a fields; do (( sum += ${fields[2]} )); done < "myfile"; echo "$sum" }}} {{{ # Do the same for a file where the rows are not lines but separated by semicolons, and fields are comma delimited. sum=0; while IFS=, read -rd ';' -a fields; do (( sum += ${fields[2]} )); done < "myfile"; echo "$sum" # Note that for the above, the file needs to end with a ; (not end with a row). If it doesn't, you can replace ''< "myfile"'' by ''<<< "$(