Everyone,
I want to thank you all for mostly constructive comments. I have been monitoring the thread, but stopped replying as I didn't think it was appropriate to say "thanks for the advice" to every single node. I would like to share with you a new line (future pun intended) that I am using with my co-workers now. It is based off merlyn's post.

When ever there is a question that arises concerning a shell script that needs to have functionality added, or doesn't run fast enough, or has not evolved with the system - my reply is simply # lines, where # is the number of lines I wrote the equivalent script in Perl that does more faster.

I think I may have mislead some of you when I said that they do not argue but only smile. This is an old saying that I heard about the only way to guarantee you will win an arguement. What it meant in this case is that they do not put up a fight - they agree with everything that I say about Perl, but still choose not to put forth the effort to learn it.

Since we have a good working relationship and they are not anti-Perl, just telling them the number of lines has piqued there interest in seeing just how this is done. We still are crazy insane busy and do not have much time to "play", but "hello, world" is now in their toolbelts.

Thanks again to everyone who contributed (even the ones that weren't so constructive).

Cheers - L~R