I have isolated a section of code that appears to be related to the rogue processes. In that section the only command like that I do is one like 'echo "$xxx" >>$file`. I guess that is an implicit system command. I could buy this except the ratio of records processed to the processes does not seem to match. A process does not pop up for each execution of the echo. In that section is also do a seek command. This is executed to reset the EOF file when I hit EOF on the input file. Could that do it? Thanks for the response? I am starting to pull my hair out trying to figure this out.