Thanks, I've removed chomp and newline, as mentioned for brevity some code was not included (the sanitization parts that only allow set chars), this script has worked safely for over 20 years, but it was ipv4 limited, I am moving it to work with ipv6 as well. can't really do the print while runmain, as the runmain output is checked for a (simplified eg) if (runcode eq x} { print foo if /Y/; print bar if /Z/} kind of thing that it looks for in line by line output (SPF records and different options, produces this found or not found, I will be moving that into another external script one day so I can get it out of this one, it has about a dozen options as $program, and the spf is only one thats checked inline) Thanks for other pointers, I've made notes so when time comes I can clean it up more