I'll read this carefully and figure it out...I was a BASIC and C++ man...shouldn't be too hard.

There is always a lot to learn... But in shell scripting, the following two do the same thing:

if command then

and:

command if [ $? -eq 0 ] then

Similarly:

if ! command then

is the same as:

command if [ $? -ne 0 ] then

It reads easier (once you know) and it avoids the situation where someone inadvertently puts something between the command and the 'if' that resets the $? e.g. some attempt at debugging like 'echo $?'.

Rob