Basically, I was stuck in 'I need to do X' mode, and didnt realise until I started reading my answers, that of course I can just construct that value, and not make people enter it at all.

To confuse things some, this variable (and its associated config files), changed name between two program versions (now it does ftp or scp, and is called transfer)..

A DB plus a GUI would be lovely, but as I said, this is a script to install a piece of software, on various machines (remote ones, usually), so actually having the DB accessable, even an SQLite one, isn't all that practicable.

. o O(Although a nice little side project would be to extract this information from our Lotus Notes delivery DB, and precreate some of the config file, or have a CGI to create it in a DB, and a button to create the config file from that info, in which case it could well be XML or whatever.. ) O o ... I can dream..

C.