Thank you to all who helped me get a 6 digit date into perl. I certainly heed warnings about not using outside system calls in perl however, I have to make an outside call again. #!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; my $fileName = "081201 diskSpace.txt"; my $fileLoc = "/Users/mini/diskSpaceLog/$fileName"; system "(df -mg;) >$fileLoc &"; My problem is the last line. Output: sh: -c: line 1: syntax error near unexpected token `diskSpace.txt' sh: -c: line 1: `(df -mg;) >/Users/mini/diskSpaceLog/081201 diskSpace.txt &' I made sure to follow the Learning Perl code. It's just not working for me. -DavidThread Next