Thanks Mark, Shane and Sander for your advice on this, it feels like I've crossed the finish line, although with this project it's more like crossing the starting line! set myShell to "tr '\\r' '\\n' " & pathName set myPattern to "|(TRAV)|" set myShell to "tr '\\r' '\\n' <" & pathName & " | grep " & quoted form of myPattern do shell script myShell ES On Sep 18, 2009, at 12:14am, Shane Stanley wrote: > do shell script "tr '\\r' '\\n' <" & pathName &...