strings inside single quotes are evaluated by the shell. they're just passed straight to the program.
i suspect the problem may be as you suggested: i'm using the old version 8 style sid instead of a service name, although ezconnect with the sid works fine inside of a perl program. i'll see if i can come up with a version 10 style service name. thanks, tom -- i'm jealous of the life i'm supposedly living. --j.d. (scrubs)
