I can't help you on campus (work in Auckland now) and most of the WAND people who would help are in Dunedin for LCA I beleive. However, there are some good guides online which may help a bit: The advanced bash scripting guide is an excellent resource: http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/ Another guide I've suggested at times is here: http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~elflord/unix/bash-tute.html The RUTE book may help as well http://rute.sf.net/ And various WAND/WLUG members have at times run "intro to linux" tutorials which covered basic bash scripting, but I can't find the website any more! If he's doing some serious file processing, he may find that a more full-featured programming language such as python (www.python.org) may be more useful. Confused? Excellent...

hi guys, hope everyone has had a good and fun new year.

anyway... I have a student up here who is doing Un*x shell scripting (he is learning on the go) to run scientific data files through thier paces and of course get the required output (that goes without saying). anyway, I don't have enough experience to help him, but I was wondering if anyone from up at the uni was around who might be able to give him some time? Please let me know as soon as you can, I'd appreciate heaps.

cheers...