note blazar <BLOCKQUOTE><I>No they won't. Your array will still hold a copy and they all will be kept open.</I></BLOCKQUOTE> I meant: <EM>"in a general situation"</EM>. In this particular one I suggested to explicitly close the entries kept in the array. I also included a footnote mentioning the ref thing. <BLOCKQUOTE><I>These file handles are references, are they not? You could try weaken these references in the array, and they'll automatically go away as normal — leaving just an undef in place.</I></BLOCKQUOTE> This is a very interesting suggestion, although I have no experience myself weakening references. I won't try because this is not <EM>my</EM> problem, but I will keep it in mind for when it may be of some use for me... 476086 476127