I'm still looking to see how to pass a shortcut in, and an export doesn't work either with or without the $ symbol.  and I thought hard links may have been an option but they are not allowed. sigh! 

anyone have any further thoughts ?

thanks

Paul ( who is thinking maybe a windows platform may be an option)

Hi Erik,  yes for the most part you have it correct, though we have a link. (the variable wasn't what I wanted) in a nutshell I'm trying to pass the link to the application to write out a report or file. vs the whole file path.  and just to clarify we have been running on VMS for years which allows for logicals and symbols which we then can use for a shortcut. 

fixed that and had to run  setsebool -P httpd_can_network_connect on

and it works thank you for all your help I learned new things today!!!

thanks

Paul