Actually, i was wrong...@result does have what I was looking for...but I'm still getting that annoying output thing on the print @data

And I don't quite understand the concept at all, so I don't know what you mean by closure.

I found this stuff at http://sunsite.ualberta.ca/Documentation/Misc/perl-5.005_03/pod/perlipc/Safe_Pipe_Opens.html

So I guess my largest problem is keeping the thing from printing to screen...how would I go about that?