One reply for each side of my brain ? ;o) Anyways... I have my code RCSed, I will see if I can find an example of the problem. I tried several different functions before I finally rolled my own. I recall one of the functions was replacing hash references with '1' on restore that cut out all sorts of data: i.e. 1 instead HASH(0x4563473). I also received the error message mentioned in this thread at one point. I will work on that example... -- Robert Hardy