If you want to test for 'bg', you can add something like if [ "$1" != "bg" -a "$1" != "" ] then echo "Syntax: go invokes LISTSERV in the foreground." echo " go bg invokes LISTSERV in the background." exit fi at the top of the 'go' script after the #!/bin/sh line. Feel free to improve on my purple prose. Or you could write a little two-liner: #!/bin/sh ./go bg and call it 'lsvstart' or something like that. Actually I've done the latter--it makes more sense to me since I use NT more than I do unix. Nathan