Thanks for this, Dave, I appreciate the time and effort you have taken to examine and respond. My Perl.exe, as seen on the screen image I referred to, is located as : c:\Dwimperl\usr\bin\Perl.exe My problem is this is only a small test GEDCOM file that I am reading. My main file is 9,000 records long :( Looks like I will need to alter my programming strategy and deal with a few lines at a time. regards, Jill