> While I'm not agitating for adding perl either and as many might
> know I write more shell scripts than most :-), I must point out
> that for non-trivial scripts, the perl equivalent is typically at
> least 3 times faster.

And three times buggier.   I have pretty much given up writing new
stuff in PERL for that reason - if it's complicated enough to warrant
using PERL, it's probably safer to write it in C.

			       _MelloN_