hmmmm, just tested that and no it does not.... looks just fine.

/bin/sh
$
root:x
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which is weird, but with Thelonius's comment I am able to parse out most of what i want to so im not terribly concerned. but i do still have one weird issue.

i changed my if statement to an unless but i still get bin/sh at the top(

bin/sh
root:x:0:1::
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), here is my unless if you desire to examine it

unless( 
      ($input eq "/bin/sh") ||
      ($input eq "\$ ") ||
      ($input eq "/") ||  
      ($input eq "bin/sh")   
    )
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as for the strangeness of expect's loging perhaps just deciding that Sun's perl 5.8 package is slightly broken would be a good idea as I gave a friend a copy over lunch and his linux box doesn't generate the \n (just got an email from him on that)