Seems a stack problem.  I don't have an OS X box to validate my guess.  I've
made a Google search with the keywords: EXC_BAD_ACCESS stack "os x"

Perhaps the following reply [1] might help...

  How big are they? You're probably running into the default stack size 
  limit, which is 512 KB. Try `unlimit stacksize` in your shell before 
  running, which will give you 65536 KB per stack.

[1] http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/archives/gtkrad-macos/2003-January/000453.html

Sridhar & Recai,

Thanks to both of you for the rapid and effective advice.  Fixing the limit corrected my problem.  
I think I last got tripped up this way 10 years ago...

I suppose that the advice to increase Mac OS X's default stacksize limit might make a fine entry 
in the FAQ or README file.

Thanks again,
Joe 

> I suppose that the advice to increase Mac OS X's default stacksize limit
> might make a fine entry in the FAQ or README file.

I added a note in the installation instructions. 
(http://midas.psi.ch/elog/adminguide.html)

- Stefan

The reason why im asking if it can be done using the Execute option is because I need to have the message id of the entry that was submitted and in an external script i dont have access to the variable

The command is passed to your shell, and some shells except more than one command. Most Linux shells accept commands separated by ';', which you can try yourself by entering for example: ls *.c; ls*.h

If i put the ';' into Execute the rest of the command becomes a comment thats why i was trying to use '&&' instead. If I encapulate the whole command in "" or '' then both commands are executed but the files im trying to write to gets created but no data is piped into it. When I use Execute with one command and pipe its output to a file everything works fine though.

Preset Author = $shell(if [ $short_name = "Anonym" ] ;then echo $Author;else echo \"$long_name, $Author\";fi)
It adds $long_name to the Author field for non-anonymous entries.

Cheers Andreas

Hi Andreas

This worked perfectly thank you.