Apologies if this has already been fixed, but glancing at the source, probably not. For version 8.22: $ true > \\ $ md5sum \\ \d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e \\ $ md5sum < \\ d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e - The checksum is not what I would expect, due to the leading backslash. And in any case, the "\d" has no obvious interpretation. Really, I can't imagine ever escaping the checksum. (Yes, my users are a clever people.) Cheers, Mike Michael Coleman (mcolema5@uoregon.edu) Computational Scientist Research Advanced Computing Services University of Oregon