Norbert Preining <preining@logic.at> wrote: > So this is bad. I resolved it as follows: > tmp="Building format(s) $@. This may take some time... " > printf "$tmp" > > Better suggestions? Yes. Since in this particular case, you do *not* want the arguments to appear as several shell words, you should use $* instead of $@ (this is one of the rare cases where $* is actually useful...). printf "Building format(s) $*. This may take some time... " -- Florent