Just when I thought I'd figured this out... I'm trying to find every line in a 2800-line pipe delimited file that contains: |(TRAV)| This lines in the file looks something like this: --11:00 pm|(TOON)|LOG|Robot Chicken|<snip> --11:00 pm|(TRAV)|LOG|Most Haunted USA|<snip> I've tried numerous variations of escaping and not escaping characters, but I haven't stumbled upon the right combination. The version below returns every line of the file. Any suggestions? set mLogFile to POSIX path of mLogFile set channelID to "(TRAV)" set thePattern to channelID set thePattern to "\\|" & channelID & "\\||" --set myShellScript to "egrep " & thePattern & " " & quoted form of mLogFile set myShellScript to "egrep " & quoted form of thePattern & " " & quoted form of mLogFile set mySchedule to do shell script myShellScript return mySchedule ES