Hi there, I am currently working on a little backup script from some firebird databases and I've come up with a weird escaping problem that I don't seem to be able to solve. Here's the thing in my script I create a variable called sqllog in which I would like to put the output of a chain of commands, here it is. sqllog=echo "SELECT * FROM RDB\$DATABASE;" | isql -u SYSDBA -pass mypasswd localhost:mydatabase | tail -n 2 | head -n 1 | wc -l if I try to execute this in shell I get the following error Statement failed, SQLCODE = -204 Dynamic SQL Error -SQL error code = -204 -Table unknown -RDB -At line 1, column 15. Table unknown RDB means it didn't take my try to escape the $. thx for any help :)