last message ended up being a perl onliner - but not intentionally. :-( #!/usr/bin/perl -dw use strict; my $date_cfg; my $new_date; print "Enter date of config file using : "; $date_cfg=<>; chomp $date_cfg; $date_cfg =~ s!(\d{4})/(\d{2})(\d{2})!$2/$3/$1!; die "Wrong date config" unless ( -e "/home/limo/Perl/$date_cfg/test"); print "Creating Juniper configuration file from: $date_cfg\n";