ta!
the first too snippets give the same output as my code prompting me to think that there is some other problem like corrupted disk/data
the machine isn't OS X though was the first thing i checked coz its the only kind of mac i know anything about (and then the only thing i no is that its basically UNIX) i was hoping to ftp the beasts to my LINUX machine and then no problem but alas this wasn't the case