Mark wrote...

>Shell/iX > avar="part1 part2 part3"
>Shell/iX > expr $avar : '([^[:space:]]+)'

Not sure as I haven't tried it, but if your parts are delimited
by a space then it might also be possible to utilize the shell's
default field separator (IFS ?) similar to

  set $avar
  echo $1
  echo $2
  echo $3

This will not work interactively, but might work inside a script.
But make sure to parse the shell script's arguments before using
the set command to replace them!

Lars.

PS to HP3000-L: Another vote for plain ASCII over .xyz attachments!