On Sat, 2007-04-28 at 15:43 -0400, Steven W. Orr wrote: > > In the file stuff section of your frozen food aisle, find out what fred > points to. > > symval=$(ls -l fred | awk '{print $11}') > Hi, Thanks for the reply, but sorry this isn't going to work. As said, this must work under Unix, and Solaris, for example, uses a standard Bourne shell, not bash. Constructs such as 'symval=$(' won't work. (I can't change shell either before anyone asks :-)) The solution must be completely generic of the operating system and the shell. Basically if it works under the Bourne shell (not bash), then it should work under any Linux and any Unix. John. -- --------------------------------------------------------------- John Horne, University of Plymouth, UK Tel: +44 (0)1752 233914 E-mail: John.Horne@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fax: +44 (0)1752 233839