I know this is way simple stuff but I'm not clear on the behaviour of different "if" accompaniments. Is if (defined $kaka) { print $kaka; } the same as...if ($kaka ne "") { print $kaka; } I know that sometimes $kaka = 0; so just if ($kaka) { print $kaka; } fails when I don't want it to. My questions are: How exactly does "defined" behave? Is there a difference between if (-e $kaka) && if (exists $kaka)? Are there other if options (like -E for !-e)? I know this is totally a RTFM post but there's so much stuff to wade through just to find these answers that I thought some monk would know precisely or at least the location of a concise description of Perl if options and behavior. Thanks very much. TTFN & Shalom.