Thanks for all of the suggestions.  Unfortunately none of them worked!  It
turns out there is a bug (so they are human after all!) in MPEX.  To simplify
my example:

 In a nutshell I am trying to ECHO some Suprtool commands, including
parenthesis and ampersands to a file.  Apparently, when I try to echo an
unmatched left parenthesis "(" it screws up.

The following works OK without a parenthesis:

 Unnumbered keep to text file ECHOTST.CHAS.HMOCORP
  Post back to old text file? yes
  1  lines posted
/l a
    1     PURGE SUPRCOM1
    2     PURGE SUPRCOM1,TEMP
    3     ECHO LINE1 &         >> SUPRCOM1
    4     ECHO LINE2 &         >> SUPRCOM1
    5     ECHO LINE3           >> SUPRCOM1
    6     PRINT SUPRCOM1
/e
C:/HMOCORP/CHAS/ echotst
Executing PURGE SUPRCOM1
Processing SUPRCOM1
File "SUPRCOM1" not found.  No purge done. (CIWARN 383)
-----Purging SUPRCOM1.CHAS.HMOCORP (16 sectors)
16 sectors saved
LINE1 &
LINE2 &
LINE3

Look what happens when I add a left parenthesis:

/t echotst
  File unnumbered
  Record length: 80    bytes
  Number of records: 6
  File code: 0
/l a
    1     PURGE SUPRCOM1
    2     PURGE SUPRCOM1,TEMP
    3     ECHO LINE1 &         >> SUPRCOM1
    4     ECHO LINE2 ( &       >> SUPRCOM1
    5     ECHO LINE3            >> SUPRCOM1
    6     PRINT SUPRCOM1
/e
C:/HMOCORP/CHAS/ echotst
Executing PURGE SUPRCOM1
Processing SUPRCOM1
File "SUPRCOM1" not found.  No purge done. (CIWARN 383)
-----Purging SUPRCOM1.CHAS.HMOCORP (16 sectors)
16 sectors saved
LINE2 ( &       >> SUPRCOM1
LINE1 &
LINE3

As you can see from above, LINE2 appears in the file before LINE1, and LINE2
also includes the file redirection commands!

Here is what I want the file to look like:

LINE1    &
LINE2  ( &
LINE3

The workaround from Vesoft is not to use their ECHO command in this situation
(i.e. %MPE XEQ ECHOTST)

They also said that Eugene would look into the problem.  Does that mean Eugene
has finally decided to get a "real" job?

 ;-)

Charlie Fontaine
NYLCare Healt.... er, uh I mean Aetna US Healthcare