I want a script to determine the owner of a particular file and then "sudo -u <thatuserid> <somecomand>". I ran across the --author option of ls but that does not seem to give me anything useful. It prints a short form of the filename without any other information at all. In fact, the output of ls --author is indistinguishable from that of ls by itself: > # ls --author htdocs/* > htdocs/hlllogo.png > # ls htdocs/* > htdocs/hlllogo.png > # Is there a linux command that will return just the userid in a form that can be passed to sudo or do I have to parse ls -l <filename>? I am digest subscriber so, if you could provide one, the favour of a direct copy of your reply is requested. Regards, Jim -- *** e-mail is not a secure channel *** mailto:byrnejb.<token>@harte-lyne.ca James B. Byrne Harte & Lyne Limited vox: +1 905 561 1241 9 Brockley Drive fax: +1 905 561 0757 Hamilton, Ontario <token> = hal Canada L8E 3C3