Network Admin and Computer Consultant by trade. Been working with and programming computers since I was a kid, some 20+ years ago. :( man time flies. Many a nights spent with cold pizza and six packs of Classic Coke! :P Programmed in many languages, perferred BASIC and VB for many years. Then found Perl and was hooked. Now I program in it daily and create CGI s‎crip‎ts on the fly. Interfacing with SYBASE and Autosys to creating system monitoring via web pages. I have been working with Perl for 3 years now, and I enjoy it every day. It has the instant results of BASIC, and it allows me to try different ideas at a whim, often times optimizing code and make the s‎crip‎ts very efficient. I wish the dreaded 'uninitialized value' was easier to track. I am learning more and more all the time. I am now picking up Object Oriented Perl from time to time. The book has really helped me understand scopes and references. It's scary when I find my self pounding off code for a hash and it works the first time. :) This was one of the strong learning curves, structured hashes can be quite intimidating, but once you understand referencing, it really helps. Budman