note liz According to "perlrun": <p> <i>The default behaviour is to randomise unless the PERL_HASH_SEED is set. If Perl has been compiled with "-DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT", the default behaviour is not to randomise unless the PERL_HASH_SEED is set. </i> <p> perhaps ActiveState Perl is compiled with -DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT ? <code> perl -V </code> might tell you whether that is the case. <p> Liz 569904 570046