> I would think that too , but Ari is right, it doesn't work that way for > either grep or egrep on the linux boxen: > > [meddle: ~] % ps -ef|grep '[d]nb' > dnb 25689 25642 0 12:56 pts/0 00:00:00 grep [d]nb ^^^ I would expect this to match, since it gets the dnb in the process-owner field. Is there another example you've seen where this isn't relevant? -j.