Ah yes, use strict is there, just not in the snippet I posted. Sort of like American Express, I don't code without it. : )

My data structure is two flat files with customer names and data. The names should match in both files, but I've got to get the data from the two files in to a structure indexed by customer name. The files generated and ascii is my best option.

I've got it working at present, but I agree the code is messy at best. I am quite intrigued by your array idea and will try that approach instead. Thanks!

There is no emoticon for what I'm feeling now.