And a many thanks to you too gryphon monk ! My boss told me that the sudo thing was a bad idea because of security loopholes,(a mistake on my part) reading in from three dumpfiles in /usr/lsys/printstatus would be a better idea because its the output of sudo printstatus anyways. what would be a good way to do this. and i've looked at the dump files and they are a night mare, how would i parse them, i'm still a beginner any online resources for parsing? Thanks alot. your imput is greatly appreciated.