Hmm - thanks for tjhe quick response, but I'm afraid that for me (on
IRIX) this still doesn't fix the problem.

I've run the test script included with the default /bin/sh, and I
always get a return value of 0 - so the problem seems to be
elsewhere...

I was trying to look back to see what change might have been
introduced to trigger this problem, but the first version of
mk/fetch/fetch seems to be from the 17th (which, by my reckoning is
about when the problems began) - what mechanism was used prior to
this?

Cheers,

stuart