Thanks for all the useful information. I am taking Labor Day off, but will definitely try some of your suggestions when I get back to the office Tuesday.

I am aware of the MQSeries Module in CPAN and have used it in variations of my script on my PC. Unfortunately, to load the module, you need a C compiler and there wasn't one on my AIX Node. Since this is a production box, the systems group wouldn't let me load a compiler.

A search of Monks turned up the q and qc programs furnished by IBM and I started using those. The systems people later agreed to install the compiler, but qc has been working well for me and I haven't bothered to switch back.