Gilbert Sebenste wrote: > It should hit on the first "IL". Can someone try this on FC4 and see what > happens for you? Works fine here, on FC4 (x86_84). Do you have LANG or LC_* set? set | grep LANG set | grep LC_ I understand that the ${dir}$1.$$ file is correctly created: you might want to have commands after the /bin/mail and before the fi to append the date, filename and file contents into a log file somewhere. That way you can be pretty sure that everything is working until the /bin/mail. As has been pointed out, there are more efficient ways of writing that shell script. Even if I'd have kept the temp file, I'd probably have gone for file=/blah/blah/$1.$$ instead of $dir, and something like grep -q " IL " $file && mail -s "ALERT: LOOK OUT!" user@xxxxxxxxxxx < $file Hope this helps, James. -- E-mail address: james | "Today Has Been Two Of Those Days." @westexe.demon.co.uk | -- Mike Andrews