I'm running XEmacs 21.0 "Pyrenean" [Lucid] (i386-pc-win32) of Tue Jan 05 1999 on HERMES, the pre-compiled binary for Windows 95 (XEmacs-21.0-b62). To print a text file, I did: M-x shell-command and entered the following text. copy c:\log.txt \\Dvxma001\ps_wes_doc_5si In the minibuffer, I saw the following message: Spawning child process: Exec format error I turned on Debug On Error" in the Lisp-Interaction menu, and saw the following in buffer that appeared: Signaling: (file-error "Spawning child process" "Exec format error") call-process-internal("C:\\WINDOWS\\COMMAND.COM" "C:\\windows\\TEMP\\emzu0B3Y" #<buffer "*Shell Command Output*"> nil "/c" "copy c:\\log.txt \\\\Dvxma001\\ps_wes_doc_5si") apply(call-process-internal "C:\\WINDOWS\\COMMAND.COM" "C:\\windows\\TEMP\\emzu0B3Y" #<buffer "*Shell Command Output*"> nil ("/c" "copy c:\\log.txt \\\\Dvxma001\\ps_wes_doc_5si")) call-process("C:\\WINDOWS\\COMMAND.COM" "C:\\windows\\TEMP\\emzu0B3Y" #<buffer "*Shell Command Output*"> nil "/c" "copy c:\\log.txt \\\\Dvxma001\\ps_wes_doc_5si") apply(call-process "C:\\WINDOWS\\COMMAND.COM" "C:\\windows\\TEMP\\emzu0B3Y" #<buffer "*Shell Command Output*"> nil ("/c" "copy c:\\log.txt \\\\Dvxma001\\ps_wes_doc_5si")) call-process-region(239 239 "C:\\WINDOWS\\COMMAND.COM" nil #<buffer "*Shell Command Output*"> nil "/c" "copy c:\\log.txt \\\\Dvxma001\\ps_wes_doc_5si") shell-command-on-region(239 239 "copy c:\\log.txt \\\\Dvxma001\\ps_wes_doc_5si" nil) #<compiled-function (command &optional output-buffer) "...(66)" [output-buffer bufferp barf-if-buffer-read-only push-mark call-process shell-file-name nil t shell-command-switch command exchange-point-and-mark match-data match-data (...) string-match "[ ]*&[ ]*$" background 0 shell-command-on-region] 7 153592 (list (read-shell-command "Shell command: ") current-prefix-arg)>("copy c:\\log.txt \\\\Dvxma001\\ps_wes_doc_5si" nil) call-interactively(shell-command) command-execute(shell-command t) execute-extended-command(nil) call-interactively(execute-extended-command) In the minibuffer, I now saw: Wrong type argument: number-char-or-marker-p, nil I tested the "copy" command line in an MS-DOS window, and the file printed properly. I tested the same shell-command function using Emacs (the Voelker version for PCs) and the file printed properly. I looked through process.el, and found references such as (if (eq system-type 'windows-nt) and confirmed that for my PC system-type is equal to windows-nt. Is there a format difference for the string that the XEmacs shell-command takes? Any assistance appreciated. Wayne -- Wayne Newberry - Principal Technical Writer Davox Corporation, 6 Technology Park Drive, Westford, MA 01886 Web: http://www.davox.com Email: waynen(a)davox.com or waynen(a)wordsmith.ultranet.com Phone: (978) 952-0564 FAX: (978) 952-0201