Doesn't really work in this case Petre. We've got a few thousand accounts in there and it takes a long time to parse. We did get it solved today. We ran it this way: eval up=~$2 (took second arg from command line as the username). Thanks to all for the help. - Jamie On 3 Jan 2002, Petre Scheie wrote: > How about this: > > cp filename `grep $1 /etc/passwd |cut -d: -f6` > > On Wed, 2002-01-02 at 20:34, Jamie Ostrowski wrote: > > > > > > > > > > I am trying to write a shell script that takes the first argument > > from the command line as the user to whom a file is placed in their home > > directory. I can't seem to get this to run. Normally, it wouldn't be a big > > deal, you'd just do > > > > cp filename /home/$1 > > > > but what throws a monkey wrench into the works is that there are > > several different home partitions some users are in home, others in > > home1,home2,home3, etc. and the following doesn't work: > > > > cp filename ~${1}/ > > > > because it interprets the ~ as a character rather than an operator. > > > > Anyone have any ideas how I can get around this? Everytime I try to > > run? Seems you can't combine the ~ with a variable. > > > > > > > > -- > > > > "It's pretty hard to stop a man who eats his toast every morning." > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Twin Cities Linux Users Group Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > > http://www.mn-linux.org > > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > > https://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list > > > _______________________________________________ > Twin Cities Linux Users Group Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > http://www.mn-linux.org > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > https://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list > -- "It's pretty hard to stop a man who eats his toast every morning."