note virtualsue If we ever see a day when there are line ending incompatibility occurring even between different versions of linux, ACK! In this case, it looks as though the same script is being run on multiple linux machines, but the odd character business is being seen on the box on which the command is run. If so, I sure hope that is not a newline problem. In [neversaint]'s script he splits on whitespace and $tm is at the beginning of the thing being split, so this might make you wonder. :) <p>[neversaint], if you always have to remove the last character of $tm, maybe you should just <code>chop $tm</code> rather than fuss with removing the char via s///. </p> <p><small>Update: wording change in first paragraph</small></p> 537639 537645