Hello Is there a way to have xargs or perhaps another tool take a list from stdin and put it somewhere besides the last argument? Say if i want to get all the offending IPs (bad logins) for a given day then i want to take that list and see if its in a file called blacklist lastb -ai |fgrep "Jul 18" |awk '{print $10 }'|sort|uniq | xargs grep ??? blacklist where ??? would be where the stdin goes -- Michael Yep Development / Technical Operations RemoteLink, Inc. 26W161 Plank Rd Naperville, IL 60563-3422 Website: www.remotelink.com Direct: 800-362-9446 x164 Fax: 630-983-0364 GPG Key 0x126439D9 Your Link to Effective Business Communications! Specializing in telecommunications and Internet technology. If it helps connect you with your customers, remote employees and colleagues we do it. We put you in control of today’s technology. From Teleconferencing, WebConferencing, Auto Attendant and Broadcast messaging to Custom data collection, ecommerce, CTI and IVR services.