note dave_the_m <blockquote><i> What would it add over and above using readdir with while and basic unix commands </i></blockquote> It allows you to programmatically to select, add files etc, without having to fork out to an external program. For example, if you didn't need to delete the files afterwards, you could have just used my original script, with $tar->add($file) for each matching file. No need to fork out, no command line length limitations etc. <p> Dave. 1014320 1014439