Come on people, give HP a break on the "." filename. This is a POSIX feature, and a common inconvenience that UNIX newbies fall into. A POSIX filaname can have ANY character in it, including punctuation, backspaces, ampersands, 7Fx, FFx, heck, the filename can also be ZERO chars in length. It can also appear to have two or more copies of the same filename in the same directory. This is usually the result of having non-displayable characters in the file name. Now, to solve the problem, do a "rm -i *" from the offending directory. It will give you the chance to remove files interactively. UNIX will never stand in your way if you want to do something stupid. It figures you must know what you are doing! :-) David VP UNIX Division Datasys/DSI