I am truly sorry for my outburst, the responses have shown me just how lazy I have become. I have gotten a shell account I intend to use for experimentation, and will get back to basics in relearning how to work with Unix without all the... in my own words... "GUI's". I had tried using an -al file mask once, a while ago, and it was blocked, if I hadn't given up, and tried it again I would have realized it was no longer blocked, and I can at least *read* the "." files (including to my embarrassment... the manual). Again, sorry for acting the way I did. Roy