Stakanov, et al -- ...and then Stakanov said... % % I have in my home directory a file, it appeared the 6th of November. I do not % recall anything special. It is owned by root: % [code] % ls -l ? % % -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5 6 nov 16.15 ? % % [/code] [snip] Although much of this is now moot since it's gone, and so I won't delve into 5kb vs 5b, note that you can ls -l | cat -v to see the not-usually-visible actual file name as expressed in octal. Have a look at that flag in the man pages for more :-) I'm on a phone right now or I'd set up some test cases to show you. And, yeah, watch out for rm and ? globbing and perhaps eating files you didn't mean to :-/ HTH & HAND :-D -- David T-G See http://justpickone.org/davidtg/email/ See http://justpickone.org/davidtg/tofu.txt