I have a little script that asks a few questions, reads the answers and then uses the answers to run an sql update. The script then exits. I would like it to go back to the beginning and start over with asking the questions again for the next record I need to update. I haven't been able to get it to do this. Here is the basic script. --Thx. # tput clear echo "Enter dbname : \c" read dbname tput clear echo "Enter Form name or number :\c" read form tput clear echo "enter old stat :\c" read ostat ostat=`echo $ostat | tr '[a-z]' '[A-Z]'` tput clear echo "enter request number :\c" read request request=`echo $request | tr '[a-z]' '[A-Z]'` tput clear FILE="/tmp" # for i in `ls -d /"$dbname"` do cd "${dbname}" 'date' >> ${FILE}/updatetohist.log # echo "update f$form set stat='H' where stat='$ostat' and request='$request'"|run_sql.sh >>${FILE}/updatetohist.log # echo "----- \n" >>${FILE}/updatetohist.log # done

One way is to place your script inside of a while loop and stop the loop by some flag such as "stop": #!/bin/sh while true do echo "Enter dbname, type stop to end: \c" read dbname if [ "$dbname" = "stop" ] then break fi echo "$dbname" . . done Slightly OFF TOPIC: What is this for? for i in `ls -d /"$dbname"` do First, this is called a UUOC. Check out this link: http://partmaps.org/era/unix/award.... If you are trying to check if /"$dbname" is a valid directory, why don't you do this instead and lose the for loop: if [ -d /"$dbname" ] then echo "$dbname is a directory" fi