note Anonymous Monk <p><i>Because these 'groups' names ( that I want to use as hash names ) will also come from a external file.</i><p> Exactly, they can all go into a hash, you can have <c> $hashref->{group1}{dogs}{fido}{breed}='doberman'; $hashref->{group1}{dogs}{fido}{age}=12; $hashref->{group11}{humans}{larry}{age}= undef; ... </c> or anything -- should really read varvarname 1007852 1007872 8