i need a simple shell script for unix, however im completely useless at shell scripting and cant get past the #!/bin/sh bit 8(.... what i desperately need to do is move files from my current directory into subdirectories depending on the first letter of its name, (eg.Accounts/A54mJU would be put into a subdirectory called A). Subdirectories should only be created if there's files to be put into them (ie. no empty subdirectories) and last of all a file called catalogue.txt should be created in my current directory listing all of the files which have been relocated, grouped by letter.... if any answers or help can be given i would be forever grateful... thanks... Janet

janetProblemSolved.pl this is a perl script which takes the absolute path of the directory for which subdirectories are to formed only care to be taken is that ther should be no file with a single letter as a name i hope this serves ur purpose art ----------------- #!/usr/local/bin/perl -w my $dir = shift ; chomp $dir ; my %catalogue=(); my $add=(); opendir (HANDLE, "$dir") or die " cant open the directory file \n"; @files = readdir(HANDLE); $countFiles = scalar(@files); close HANDLE; for($i = 2; $i >$dir/catalogue.txt") or die " cant open the file to write \n"; foreach $letter ( sort keys %catalogue) { print FILE "files for letter $letter \n"; foreach $document ( @{$catalogue{$letter}}) { print FILE " $document \n"; } } close FILE ; close HANDLE; -----