Wow, I've never had my very own dedicated thread before :)

Anyway, let's see if we can work on this. I can't provide code, since I don't have your aml_read program, nor your datafile.

You mentioned (elsewhere), that this problem only began to show up when you changed OS's. That could me that either you've got a screwy version of perl (unlikely), a screwy shell (who knows?), or a messed up environment.

I guess we just start debugging. You've established that the line by itself works, with variables hardcoded. That would seem to say that it's either a problem with interpolation of the qx{}, or a logical error in the loop.

Step One: Leaving everything the same in the program, replace the $_[?] variables with some content (leave the loop intact). If that doesn't run, it means the problem is not the qx{}, but the loop. (You haven't shown us the loop, so we can't debug it)

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