The scripts were created by using the existing scripts from the generic Unix port of TADS as a template. They have been modified in order to fix portability issues. So if you see a script that looks like this: if test -f "$T3_OUT/$1.log"; then : else foo fi don't bother changing it to: if [ ! -f $T3_OUT/$1.log ]; then foo fi and sending it to the maintainer. The second example may look much better, but it's not portable. ('!' is not portable, '[' is not portable... welcome to Unix!) Of course, it's unlikely that people use 4.3BSD or Solaris 8, but still...