You can use numfmt to parse the number: $ seq -w 0001 0005|numfmt 1 2 3 4 5 Or just use plain sed: $ seq -w 0001 0005|sed 's/^0*

You can use numfmt to parse the number: $ seq -w 0001 0005|numfmt 1 2 3 4 5 Or just use plain sed: $ seq -w 0001 0005|sed 's/^0*//' 1 2 3 4 5