If i issue the command ls /home/virtual/test.com/home/ | wc -l | awk '{print $1}' at the command line, it returns 91, but if i want to put that into a perl script as a variable like this $users = `ls /home/virtual/xms.ms/home/ | wc -l | awk '{print $1}'` it returns ____91 (_ = space). Any ideas why it is putting those spaces in front of the output? it looks like it is ingnoring the | awk '{print $1}' part of the line!