On Friday 19 Sep 2003 11:04 am, Andrew Hatch wrote: > How can I force bash to 'dereference' $FILE1 to be "/home/file1.dat"? Change the line: echo $THEFILE to: eval echo \$$THEFILE -- Martin Martin.Ward at durham.ac.uk http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/ Erdos number: 4 G.K.Chesterton web site: http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/