note helgi To me, apart from the various points people have made about using warnings and strictures, structured code, using subroutines and so forth, the most important rule is:<p> <b>Use meaningful names!</b><p> This applies to variables, subroutines, loops, filehandles, everything. <p> Always take a little extra time, 10 seconds or so, to name your variables well. <p> Good names can often make comments redundant and unnecessary.<p> I hope I never ever have to maintain a program again that's full of variables named @tmp, $i, $n, $ldr, %hash or subroutines named process or run and all the other meaningless crap people foist off as names.<p> <p> <br>-- <br> Regards,<br> Helgi Briem<br> helgi DOT briem AT decode DOT is 265561 265561