> I have this line: > ALSA=`aplay --version` > > in a script. when I execute the script I get the message > line 187: --version: command not found What's in line 187? Do you really want to use backticks ` or should it be more like ALSA='aplay --version' (apostrophes)? If you want to stick to the backticks you should redirect aplay's output from STDERR to STDOUT: ALSA=`aplay --version 2>&1` (aplay 1.0.6, CentOS 4.7). Chris