If it is a local password file you will run into about the same issue I described above where the search can take like 10 seconds per name with the std lib getpwnam. building a hash will take about that same amount of time but the time will be preloaded -- meaning getpwnam of 1000 users against a 500,000 user /etc/passwd file you get 1000 x N (N = number of secs to search the file) hash method you get N + (Y x 1000) where Y is the time it takes to lookup a hash entry in perl (not very long)

-Waswas