Could someone please tell me the difference between the different piping characters e.g |, >>, >

well, the | is used to redirect output to another app, such as ps auxww | grep telnet which looks for telnet in the process list. The > directs output to a file, such as man inet > myinetmanfile which makes a text file called myinetmanfile with the output of the man file for inet. The >> does the same as > but instead of wiping the content of the file if it already exists, it appends the stuff to the end of the file, such as man inetd >> myinetmanfile which will add the inetd man file to the inet man file already in myinetmanfile. Hope this helps. Have Fun, Jim. -- James McBoyle /"\ james.mcboyle@sun.com \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign Software Engineer X Against HTML Mail Integrated Software QED / \