Thanks ww. I appreciate taking the time to comment on the post. I do understand is a lot of code, but since I'm starting to learn how to do PERL there's a lot of things I'm not familiar with. Did not want to leave anything out in case there's something obvious I have not done. Apologize for the lengthy post (and now the long response, lol). Guess I was more focused on the solution than comunincating it well on the forum. Will do better next time.

Thanks for the info about the profiler and other options, this is a one time script for a very specific task. a one and done type of deal. So need to weigh all the options and see how much more effort to dedicate. Thanks again from Dominican Republic. Come visit.