Does anyone know of a workaround for EOF failing to detect end of file for data piped to an idl command line? For example, my command is something like "determineStuffToDo.sh | idl -rt doStuff.sav". The doStuff.sav image has this main loop: WHILE NOT EOF(0) DO BEGIN READ, line PRINT, 'I HOPE TO TRANSFORM ' + line transform, line END WHILE NOT EOF(0) DO BEGIN READ, stuff ; etc... END The EOF call never returns false. I am running IDL 6.3 on Ubuntu 8.04 (GNU bash 3.2). I can make the code work if I redirect stdin using the " cheers, Mark