Ahhh.. Thanks a lot. I forgot the `s when I copied it over from HP. It works with both `` and $(..)

Your second suggestion "O_BASE=${OHOME%/product/*}" works perfectly without all the extras. I cannot understand that one - need to get a good book to learn that syntax.

On the third part, the way this awk works is, it assumes the part before the first slash as a field: "/aaa/bbb/product/eee". In this one, aaa is the second field per awk and bbb is the third field.

Problem resolved. THanks a lot for your help.