I am writing a script which writes XML code to a file. In this script i am writing the results of various processes into XML tags, but after a particular process the script terminates unexpectedly - i have identified the piece of code that causes the termination: echo "<process>" >>$dir1 echo "<name>Database2</name>" >>$dir1 echo "<detail>" >>$dir1 sqlplus username/$PW@database2 <<EOF1 >>$dir1 @sql2.sql >>$dir1 exit EOF1 echo "</detail>" >>$dir1 echo "</process>" >>$dir1 The word "exit" seems to terminate the entire script whereas it should only exit from SQL, if i omit the word "exit" then the rest of the unix commands aren't recognised as i would be in SQL. I also have a similar process on database 1 which i run just before the above process and the code runs fine. Including the word "exit": echo "<process>" >>$dir1 echo "<name>Database 1</name>" >>$dir1 echo "<detail>" >>$dir1 PW=$1 sqlplus username/$PW@database1 <<EOF1 >>$dir1 @sql1.sql >>$dir1 @sql15.sql >>$dir1 exit EOF1 echo "</detail>" >>$dir1 echo "</process>" >>$dir1 What i wish is for the second command to run including the writing of the final tags to the dir1 file and then move onto the next unix commands, whereas it currently terminates at the word exit.