Chicago.PM's Leland Johnson sent me a swell idea for ack: Have -o let you specify an output string you want, based on the regex, so now you can. Go get ack 1.25_02 and try it out, please. Note that 1.25_01 is painfully broken and I've flagged it to be deleted from CPAN. xoxo, Andy -- Andy Lester => andy at petdance.com => www.petdance.com => AIM:petdance