Problem discovered in tr (GNU coreutils) 8.13 on a Ubuntu 12.04. Running those commands: cd $HOME echo "Linux" | tr [:upper:] [:lower:] will result: linux Running the same from /usr/bin: cd /usr/bin echo "Linux" | tr [:upper:] [:lower:] will result: winux which is obviously a bad answer. In debug mode: sh -xc "echo "Linux" | tr [:upper:] [:lower:]" + echo Linux + tr [:upper:] w winux Regards.