Sorry, I'm a newbie (only 2 .pl scripts so far), but I have 2 needs that I think are related & I can't find a solution in either of my 2 perl books, or here on the web. I need to 1) interogate the 8 bits of a byte as 8 Y/N "flags". VB would allow an AND/OR against a mask, does perl have anything similar? 2)Binary Coded Decimal (BCD) fields. I need to split into usable digits & then repack into the "2 in 1" format. Thanks for the help.