Wow! Thanks to all. I'm a bit over whelmed by all the info. Some of the suggestions I've tried and they didn't work but its probably because I don't know quite how to properly structure my variables. It will take me a while to undertand all this. The bottom line is that I am trying to recursively parse the directory to obtain a list of all the files in it and their sizes. When I say I need the file type, I need to mostly identify directories for the recursion and files/links in the tree for my list. Sort of like a 'find' command which I tried first but turned out to be way too slow using shell script.