Thanx for your help, I been over the OOP/OOD stuff for perl but it all works in a very similar why to java/C++ both of which I'm very familiar with. I still can't figure out how to retrieve the super class handle from within an eval block, but maybe it's not possible without hacking around inside perl? I think I will try a different approach for now and come back to this when there are no deadlines to be met :o) Thanx again for you help.