Ok, so I finally understand the N/a notation but am having trouble with this code. Seems that the () notation is pretty new as it is not in my Programming Perl, 2nd Edition and my perl 5.6.1 does not support it. But, my perl 5.8.0 does support it and is documented in its perlfunc manpage.

Here is the error that I get with the perl 5.6.1:

Invalid type in unpack: '(' at C:\Data\test\dcode2.pl line 8, <> chunk 1.

I am not too sure how to go about "converting" this code to work with perl 5.6.1.

BTW, still cannot get the code to work on perl 5.8.0 without an error with the "/" as stated earlier.

Ed