note Anonymous Monk Thanks for looking into the issue. the current perl version im my server is as below "This is perl 5, version 12, subversion 0 (v5.12.0) built for sun4-solaris". I was referring to few sample perl programs and trying to come up with my own code for the same.I would definitely prefer to use the most optimised and latest standard of coding Perl. if its not too much to ask, would you consider to re-write my code using the standards you mentioned. thanks again. 1003734 1003925 1