Thanks in advance for any hints/help/pointers/tricks that you can provide. /Mike Try using $@ in place of $* For example, consider the script: echo $# echo $@ for i in "$@" do echo $i done ###################### say the script was called /tmp/zzzz run /tmp/zzzz test1 test2 "test3 test4" $# should be 3 and the output should be test1 test2 test3 test4 Hope this helps