sed can handle control characters if you have a version that's fancy enough. I'm pretty certain doing these kinds of conversions is listed in the sed.faq file. There's tr that can be used too. You can join sed-users and that's a yahoogroups.com mailing list if you run into any problems. _______________________________________________ Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list