Hi, I'm not sure an apples to apples example is possible in print. I have sudu set up as an alias (alias sudu='sudo -H -u prodaccount SudoENV.ksh where SuoENV.ksh is a bash shell script that references the prodaccount environment variables. Actual command line example; sudu optim_table.pl -i ab_in_keys_201504 -ic NZMDSODS -n 1000 -o work_cal_123 -oc NZMDSODS -u clough -w "track_seq in ('Z010201503052014871','Z0102015030520148710')" .pl snippets

GetOptions ("i=s"               => \$input_tbl,
            "ic=s"              => \$input_con_str,    ## defaults to 
+"nzmdsods"
            "o=s"               => \$output_tbl,       ## defaults to 
+"${input_tbl}"
            "oc=s"              => \$output_con_str,   ## defaults to 
+"nzmdsods"
            "u=s"               => \$user,
            "k=s"               => \$key,              ## defaults to 
+"rowid"
            "w=s"               => \$where_condition,  ## defaults to 
+"1=1"
            "n=i"               => \$rec_count,        ## defaults to 
+1000
            "cfg=s"             => \$config_file,      ## defaults to 
+same name as report file; if specified, overrides
 pii class mapping
            "ld=s"              => \$log_dir           ## defaults to 
+"/Projects/OPScripts/MDS/logs"
           );
.....


print "CED WHERE CONDITION $where_condition\n";
$where_condition = "1=1" if (!$where_condition);
$where_clause = "where $where_condition";
print "CED WHERE CLAUSE $where_clause\n";
[download]

where SuoENV.ksh is a bash shell script

So are you using $* in your script where you should be using "$@" ?

 $ cat wrapper
#!/bin/bash
perl -le'print for @ARGV' $*
perl -le'print for @ARGV' "$@"
 $ ./wrapper foo "a b c"
foo
a
b
c
foo
a b c
[download]

- tye        

Thank-you much for your response(s). In theory this should address the symptom and had been recommened from other quarters. However it was to no avail. I changed the script to read the where clause from a file, rather than command line entry, which gets me over the hump for the time being. I'm still in persuit of a pure solution as I suspect this will crop up again.