>I spent two hours one day banging my forhead because I typo'd !~ as !=. I >can't trust myself with !~. :) That's why Larry invented -w. To save you from using != //. pbaker at razorbill:~> perl t.pl no match 1 Use of uninitialized value in pattern match (m//) at t.pl line 7. Argument "egg" isn't numeric in numeric ne (!=) at t.pl line 7. Sean