On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 11:22:55AM -0800, Benjamin Smith wrote: > file: script1.sh > #! /bin/bash > script2.sh $1 There's your mistake. It should be script2.sh "$1" Otherwise $1 is evaluated and passed through as potentially multiple parameters to script2.sh For example: $ cat x #!/bin/sh ./y "$1" $ cat y #!/bin/sh echo "$1" $ ./x "hello\ there" hello\ there The problem isn't the shell doing bad things, it's you not understanding how shell variable expansion is done when calling external commands. -- rgds Stephen