I would like to see output like so or something to that effect: I tried adding values uid and gecos but got errors and played for awhile and could not get it printed correctly. So you are using name and uid as the keys and host,gecos and gid as values? I seem to struggle with hashes even though I have read Learning and Programming Perl. Any advice you have? wlprdadm found with uids of 134 and 135 on /home/dbsmith/passwd.eipdbmp1.hpux $gecos /home/dbsmith/passwd.carappp1.hpux $gecos as an example. thank you!