note johngg You may be able to get a better idea of what is going wrong if you include <code>$!</code> in your error message. This is the variable in which Perl stores the O/S error message when things like <code>open</code> fail, e.g.<p> <code> $fn = "non_existant_file"; open IN, "<$fn" or die "open: $fn: $!\n"; </code><p> would error with<p> <code> open: non_existant_file: no such file or directory </code><p> Cheers,<p>JohnGG 538316 538351