I have two you machine a HP (HP-UX w-hp3 B.10.20 TO 9000/785 2008935932 two-user license) and another Sun (SunOS isis1 5.10 Generic_118833-03 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun- Fire -V240) with UNIX and when I execute The following command to it determines my default shell %echo $$SHELL I wait something in the way %echo $$SHELL /bin/csh and however I obtain: isis1% echo $$SHELL 9424SHELL isis1% hp3:/casa1>echo $$SHELL hp3:/casa1>20607SHELL that it means 9424 and 20607? Thank you. "La experiencia es algo maravilloso. Nos permite reconocer un error cada vez que lo volvemos a cometer.", Franklin P. Jones

I think you are trying to determine your default shell by looking at the SHELL variable. You really can't trust SHELL especially if you spawn a lot of child shells. Take a look at this link: http://www.samag.com/documents/s=10... The first tip shows you a number of ways of determining the default shell. Maybe one will help you.