I cannot see why you would need a data sample since all I am doing is matching a string pattern with the file Header, so I can identify the file type. The string I am looking for can be found in the code. In the future I will use Perl, rather than shell to read the file. thank you. Originally, I thought that $head was storing the first line/header that I expected since it was printing to the screen, but it was actually storing in stdout. An issue that has been addressed and fixed my issue. Thank you for your input.