Sorry, I was wrong: the directory in which you run the command needs to be empty (no files and no directories). Alessandro >The "ls" command can give also a null response, if you are placed in a >directory which has non files (i.e. an empty directory or containing only >directories). > >If the returned prompt is SQL>, that colud be the right behaviour. > >Alessandro > > >>Morning, >> <cut> >>session and type (for instance) SQL>!ls - it returns to a prompt without >>listing the files in the directory. Anybody had this happen to them >>before? I tried searching on Metalink, but I don't even know how to phrase <cut> -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l