Yeah I'm familiar with linux's proc filesystem (I love it, in fact), but this question is about writing a portable application. Also, I reallize that system calls are not necessarily portable from one O/S to another... that's why psuedo system calls as perl builtins are so nice. Like: I don't have to know what each O/S's system call is for deleting a file, but I know that in perl, unlink does the trick.