note Illuminatus [zentara] did indeed answer the question you asked, but it's probably not the question that you wanted to ask :) If you are really asking "how can I open the file, remove the comments, and then close it (ie not create an additional file)", the answer is that, in general, you can't. If you read the section on <b>open</b> he quoted, it tells you so. You can use <i>perl -i</i>, which says it modifies the file in place, but if you read the fine print, you'll see that it actually uses 2 files. There are ways to use just one file, but that is an exercise left to the user<p><b>fnord</b></p> 975215 975215