Well as planned, $decor should never be undefined---but paranoia is a good thing in programming. And certainly the same could be said for $dir. Your note about 'if defined and length' is one of my pet peeves about Perl---you shouldn't have to do two things to make this kind of check. Part of this I suppose is a 'C' hangover---over driven use of zero and such like. Sigh! Thanks again...
--hsm
"Never try to teach a pig to sing...it wastes your time and it annoys the pig."