Aqumix.107 net.bugs.4bsd,net.bugs.v7 utzoo!decvax!ittvax!qumix!msc Fri May 7 15:09:44 1982 Bourne Shell bug? Doing the following on my 4.1bsd system caused strange things to happen. 1) Create a shell script "test" containing #! /bin/sh echo [$1] [$2] [$3] [$4] 2) Create a file "test.tmp" containing "-a" "-o 0.5" "" 3) Give the command test "-a" "-o 0.5" "" This results in the output [-a] [-o 0.5] [] [] which is as expected. 4) Give the command cat test.tmp which gives the expected output "-a" "-o 0.5" "" 5) Give the command test `cat test.tmp` which should give the same result as 3 since test.tmp contains the same text as the command tail used in 3. Instead the output is ["-a"] ["-o] [0.5"] [""] Notice how the "-o 0.5" argument has been split into two arguments somewhere along the way. Also notice that the quotation marks have not been stripped off. I would appreciate a fix or some way to get around the problem. Mark Callow Qume Corp. {decvax!}ittvax!qumix!msc