Right - though that's solvable with xargs: $ echo "0005" | xargs printf '%d\n' 5 That said, my suggestion doesn't work anyway since the leading 0 mark

Right - though that's solvable with xargs: $ echo "0005" | xargs printf '%d\n' 5 That said, my suggestion doesn't work anyway since the leading 0 marks it as octal, d'oh (as mentioned elsewhere in the thread).