I've found a bug (10.4.11) which is probably still in Leopard since I looked at the Leopard bug fix technote and it's not mentioned. I've reported the bug to Apple. If the target folder of the "list folder" command has a name longer than 32 characters you get a "bad filename" error. I can't use the Finder to get the info because the very reason I'm needing the command for is to force the lazy Finder to update the contents of the folder! I came up with the following workaround, with finderPath as the colon-delimited path of the target as text: set oldDelims to Applscript's text item delimiiters set Applscript's text item delimiiters to return set folderContents to (every item of (do shell script "ls -1 " & quoted form of (POSIX path of finderPath))) set set Applscript's text item delimiiters to oldDelims --force the Finder to update tell application "Finder" repeat with thisItem in folderContents update alias (finderPath & thisItem) end repeat end tell --Emmett