Check tr by hand, entering /bin/sh, must be: $ LC_ALL=de_DE.ISO8859-15 $ export LC_ALL $ LC_ALL=C tr 'a-z' 'A-Z' yyyy YYYY ^D $ tr 'a-z' 'A-Z' yyyy <some 8bit chars> ^D -- Andrey Chernov | http://ache.pp.ru/