Thanks for the help. I have tried what fpmurphy has written (excluding the regular file test) but every time I enter a valid filename of a file that exists, I keep getting the "Exiting. No filename argument entered" error.

In fact no matter what I type, the above condition catches it. Any idea why that is?

if I remove the above and just leave the other conditions, non-existent files that have a single filename are caught but entering nothing doesn't and entering two worded filenames still doesn't get caught.

The $# conditions ain't working as they should. the ! -e $file is the only condition working properly.

This is puzzling! the $file is read and I enter the conditions directly after it. :S