But what scares me about environment variables for files is the prospect of the day I see a user type: grep foo < 'LRECL=80,RECFM=V,DISP=(OLD,KEEP,DELETE),DSN=data' then I shall know that we are done. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | bzs at world.std.com | uunet!world!bzs Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD