Listmates, Here is an off-the-wall one for the BASH guys. Many times I need to get file or directory information from the command line with wildcards in the filename or path. I have always hated having to quote the filename or path to prevent shell expansion before it gets to my script. I was pecking around on a script for rsync that would take the same type of file and path information with wildcards and hit upon a really cool way to handle the input without having to quote the names with wildcards to prevent expansion. (.. at least I thought it was cool) Any way, I thought somebody else could get some use out of it. I've replaced the rsync calls with echo statments so your can test it if you have any use for it. Any script that deals with multiple files or filespecs is a candidate for its use. Take a look. The process is a 2-loop process with an Array of cli inputs as the outer loop and the inner loop tests whether the array element holds a directory or a filespec with globbing. If it is a filespec with wildcards, then the wildcards are processed with the inner loop using ls for the individual files. Works for one file or a thousand specified in as many chunks as you want to put on the command line: #!/bin/bash --norc OLDIFS=$IFS IFS=$'\n' ## Fill an Array with all CLI input declare -a CLIARRAY CLIARRAY=( "$@" ) ## Step through CLIARRAY with ls to expand wildcards and process ## files specified on the command line sequentially. Rely on ## rsync to throw error if bad filename ## Simple echo is used for this example for ((a=0;a<${#CLIARRAY[@]};a++)); do ## if the argument is a directory rsync in 1 shot, else rsync each file if [[ -d ${CLIARRAY[${a}]} ]]; then echo "directory: ${CLIARRAY[${a}]}" else for b in $(ls ${CLIARRAY[${a}]}); do echo "file: $b" done fi done IFS=$OLDIFS exit 0 If you are interested in using it with rsync as I had it originally, just replace the first echo with: rsync -ruv ${CLIARRAY[${a}]} ${SSUSER}@${DESTHOST}:${DESTPATH} and the second echo with: rsync -ruv $b ${SSUSER}@${DESTHOST}:${DESTPATH} This allowed me to collect a lot of dispersed information for troubleshooting the X issues that have been plaguing me with a minimum of typing. I had used it like: 2nv /var/log/mes* /var/log/Xorg.* /var/log/kdm.log (the script name was 2nv (short for rsync to nirvana) but it allow chunks to be thown into it and it would nicely rsync the wanted files to their destination. Script in good health :p -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com