>> I need a korn shell that will handle the windows-like path names > (pdksh), and where "read" executes in the same shell that called it > (ksh '93). Keep wishing. There are other ways of doing what you need to do with sqlplus without using a pipe and read. -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/