OK. I guess I am in over my head. I have a Palm PDB file & want to read the whole thing & want to change it into a CSV file or something readable for Excel. The only script which I have run successfully is the example (a .pl file) one sent with perl. It does not require any input. I would want to pass the name of the file I want to read. Does the code you sent have to be compiled? The PALM:PDB file I copied from CPAN seems to be a .pm file. Is the Camel book something I have? I found lots of references, but no book. Should I give up now?