Thanks to everyone, I think I will dig in to the docs a bit more. What was tripping me up was I think some of the Perl I thought I had a handle on, so I think I'll pick their Perl script apart and get to know all of its nuances, and go from there. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. Oh and the book list is perfect, Russ:) Those are some of the ones I was thinking about getting, it helped make up my mind.