Sorry, I misread F.Tran's response - the extraneous "hf:localhost:4" line might indeed be sufficient to derail the echo|sed|awk machinery in the script. -- Dr. Martin Kroeker martin at ruby.chemie.uni-freiburg.de c/o Prof.Dr. Caroline Roehr Institut fuer Anorganische und Analytische Chemie der Universitaet Freiburg