Emergency UNIX and Linux Support

A shot in tge dark: do the departments each have their own printer ? It might be that each printer expects a different encoding.

Going back to the original code...

Code:

 ${PRINT_SERVER_HOME}/bin/pdpr -d${PRINTER} -x"-start-sheet none" ${AVALNEWFILELIST} >${ERRFILE} 2>&1

According to the online docs for this command, the printer is specified with

Code:

-p${PRINTER}

and not "-d". For a number of reasons this could be the source of your problem

Mmmm,

We're using HP's Output Server. And that is a custom pdpr command made by our boss. Works off of the command line, however it fails when used within a script.

If I use the syntax for pdpr on the command line, and list files like: /home/user/filelist.a* it will print without the random characters in between.

I think we're close to figuring it out.

"custom pdpr made by our boss" just sunk in. Great! He can figure the problem
out then since it's probably a bug in his program.

It can also be one o your files includes a control character that sets the printers output mode to something else.

Have you tried printing to the opposing printer? Might eliminate the printer itself.
What is the make and model of each printer, and how are they connected to the network? Do they both have the same amount of internal memory?

Is this custom "pdpr" an alias, a script or what? Has $PATH been modified to find a different version when used from the command line? i.e. Are you sure that you are executing the same program from your script?

Slightly off topic (I think): Beware that $PRINTER is a system reserved Environment Variable name left over from early unix but still read by modern commands. It's usually mentioned in "man lp" to name but a few places.

The HP "Advance Printing Software" product is well documented for Tru64 unix, but would help to know what Operating System and version you have.