On Wed, 3 Apr 2013, Gerry wrote: > strings /proc/$$/environ That's interesting, but what is it doing differently from printenv? It is different... $ strings /proc/$$/environ > proc.txt ; printenv > printenv.txt $ cat proc.txt printenv.txt printenv.txt | sort | uniq -c | gawk '$1<3' | perl -pe 's/^ +1 / proc / ; s/^ +2 / printenv /' printenv OLDPWD=/home/mbmiller proc PWD=/home/mbmiller printenv PWD=/home/mbmiller/research/data/MCTFR/GEDI/dbgap/final proc SHLVL=1 printenv SHLVL=2 printenv TERM=rxvt proc TERM=xterm printenv _=/usr/bin/printenv proc _=/usr/bin/vncserver I am using Xvnc, which seems to have something to do with my particular results. My working directory is the one given by printenv and the $TERM shown by printenv is what I see when I enter "echo $TERM". Mike