Sorry if I came off as being snippy. It's just that the use of <> and @ARGV is so common in just about every text-oriented Perl script ever written.... I was just surprised that your experience was so atypical. It's as if C programmer were surprised to find that if you're in a while, and you do a return, it gets you out. (BTW, that was a real question from a real former cow orker. He's probably writing VB these days.)

    -- Chip Salzenberg, Free-Floating Agent of Chaos