Thanks for the advice, I was looking for a better way of handling the way the sum was processed so your tip is most welcome. Regarding your suggestion of changing the high score file format to score:name .. I could then handle the file with something like ..

#...
open (FILE, "hi.dat") || die "cannot open file hi.dat\n"; while (<FILE
+>) { 
chomp; 
($hi_score,$name) = split(/:/); }
close (FILE) || die "cannot close file hi.dat\n";
#...
[download]

Gordy