Hi, On Mon, 28 Apr 2003 18:23:34 +0000, Theodore Ts'o wrote: > Ignoring a dependency is probably bettter than a deadlock which makes > the system unusable, to be sure There's a third option. Make "need" exit with nonzero status if it's called recursively. Then the script just says set -e need foo and everything works. (I assume 'need' is capable of printing sensible error messages here.) I like the "need" idea. It's neat. ;-) -- Matthias