Looks like a challenge. Here are some untested suggestions that might might get you on the right track. It does strike me odd that your dot-qmail files look like that. On Fri, Jun 29, 2001 at 10:46:35AM -0500, Jay Kline wrote: > * aliases where the name of the alias is contained in the first line of the > file (eg- $i="john" in the script below, and the file's first line > is "johna") [ -z `grep "^$i.*" /var/qmail/alias/.qmail-$i` ]; > * aliases where the first line of the file is contained in the filename > (eg- $i="johnb" in the script below and the first line of the > file is "john") [ -z "`echo $i | grep $(head -1 /var/qmail/alias/.qmail-$)`" ]; > Does anyone have any ideas? It might be easier to make a pass at the files and extract all this data. Then you can just process groups of three strings. Nate