note scsijon <p>thank you all, ESPECIALLY ree, many smilies to you in thanks</p> <p>from reading the link to the perlhowto site and puzzleing for quite a while as to why it didn't work as it says it should 'the penny dropped'.</p> <p>I had origonally been using ' (on the key with ") amongst the character sets I had tested and not ` (on the key with ~).</p> <p>Final code in case anyone else comes across the need is,</p> <code>$package_category = `./support/find_cat $package_name $package_description` ;</code> <p>And a note to parser, down here in australia, Perl is taken to mean something like, she's a beaut shella or great campsite or tasty thirst quenching drink (usually beer), definately not a programming language! Sorry!</p> a final thanks to all :-) 1019532 1019612