thanks @czardas and everyone who contributed to this thread, it was enjoyable! i will now cherish my digital medal and go on an offline vacation for a week, so i won't be around to witness the fallout of these:
@iamtheky,
1) i believe a new thread is in order.
2) i recon an AutoIt challenge solution that involves calling an external executable/library to perform its core task can hardly be considered valid. the ultimate example being of course this:
3) an AutoIt solution to meet your challenge already exists. i can't tell how fast it is compared to bash command, but it is AutoIt...