note blahblahblah The first error message, <i>du: cannot access `~skim': No such file or directory</i>, made me curious. I think that if you reduce your program to a very simple command you'll find that it's not running from the right directory or that <i>~skim</i> doesn't exist? <code> my $homedir = '~bogus'; $du=`du -ch $homedir`; print "$du"; </code> produces a similar message for me: <code> ./test du: cannot access `~bogus': No such file or directory 0 total </code> 675134 675134