sir jim,

thanks, that worked!

i am using bash. your reply prodded me to read more on substitution. good lead, sir. may i extend my luck with some more questions?

can the ps command in a server-side script be made to execute on another workstation in the LAN? that is, selected workstation(s) in the network will be asked to run the ps locally but the csv file comes from the server. this is to avoid each workstation having to wget the csv file from the server and copied locally. the output of the ps command is also redirected to a file in the workstation (only because i dont know how to redirect it to a file on the server instead). and sometime later, i can then just execute a cron task to wget those local files into a directory in the server for later processing.

but if a server script can be made to run the ps command (referring to processes running in the workstation) and the ps output can be directed to a file on the server, that would even be better.

i am not sure of my newbeeish approach, better ideas are most welcome. but i am at a loss on what keywords to search over the net.

thanks again