Marc SCHAEFER <schaefer@alphanet.ch> wrote: > TMPFILE=/tmp/fx_$$ > TMPFILE2=/tmp/fx_2_$$ and as this script runs as root, it would be better to do something like DIR_NAME=/tmp/dir_$$ mkdir $DIR_NAME if [ $? != 0 ]; then echo can't atomically create dir else ... create temp files here fi Alternatively, you can do it in a big pipe, if you have the virtual memory.