1. So as I understand it what I want to do more research on is the term called "regular expressions"? I googled for "regular expressions" and got mixed results with something called "extended regular expressions" is this related? (I can probably figure this part out on my own) 2. For my shred script I did this: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #!/bin/bash shred -f "$1" rm "$1" ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This 'appears' to have shredded the file and then deleted it. It's weird but the first time I tested the script, I thought it was broken because the file remained on the desktop. I tried to play it and found it was garbage data so I assumed 'shred' simply overwrites the file and then I added the second instruction to delete it afterwards. Now the shred man page says if a setting in your etc/fstab file for the EXT3 is set a certain way then it's possible that the shredded file can be recovered... My fstab file looks like this: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # /etc/fstab: static file system information. # # <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass> proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 # /dev/sda2 UUID=05c88919-02ac-4600-8314-60f526db279d / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1 # /dev/sda3 UUID=1326a60b-8ec3-48ef-a8a6-c32c72d7825e /home ext3 defaults 0 2 # /dev/sda1 UUID=28DC714FDC7117F0 /media/sda1 ntfs defaults,umask=007,gid=46 0 1 # /dev/sda4 UUID=bea4e226-c950-4213-9b79-0944af99dcb0 none swap sw 0 0 /dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec 0 0 /dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto,exec 0 0 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So now would I need to edit something here in order to make the file unrecoverable if I use this script? Thanks to all for the help. I appreciate it.