morgon, I only have one script -- shell script, in which i have a block of perl code. Lets forget I have 'print' statement in the perl block. Lets say I am setting str3 somewhere in the middle of the perl block. After perl block has finished executing, I am back in the shell part of the code and need to get the content of str3 variable that was set in the perl block of the code. How do I do it?