great thanks alot! You rock! I asked the email list at beginners@perl.org and I received no responses. Anyway I have two questions related to my desired output. 1) from my code I am getting these errors Filehandle FOO opened only for output at derek line 23, <FOO> line 39. 08/09/04 11:02:43 E01220 Filehandle FOO opened only for output at derek line 23, Here is my code:

## Define ENV

$ENV{"PATH"} = qq(/usr/epoch/bin:/usr/epoch/EB/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:
+/bin:/sbin);
delete $ENV{"IFS"};
        
## Declare scalers for client templates and client tape logs

        my $scratches="/usr/local/log/scratch_tapes.log";
        my $logf="/usr/epoch/EB/log/ebcat.log";

## Gather data for scratch tapes; open file, create array list, then p
+rint it.

        open (FOO, ">$scratches") || die "could not open file:$!";
        my $scratch_list = `grep 9840S $logf |grep "ebexpire, ebexpire
+"`;
        print FOO "$scratch_list";
                while (<FOO>) {
                        local $, = "\t";
                        print +(split)[0,1,5], $/;
                }
        close (FOO);
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can anyone shed some light? Also to use the Perl grep I have code as follows but it is not working.

## Define ENV

 $ENV{"PATH"} = qq(/usr/epoch/bin:/usr/epoch/EB/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin
+:/bin:/sbin);
 delete $ENV{"IFS"};
        
## Declare scalers for client templates and client tape logs

        my $scratches="/usr/local/log/scratch_tapes.log2";
        my $logf="/usr/epoch/EB/log/ebcat.log";

        open (FOO, ">$scratches") || die "could not open file:$!";
        open (D, "$logf") || die "could not open file:$!";
        while ( <D> ) {
                if (( /9840S/ ) && ( /"ebexpire, ebexpire"/ )) {
                        print $_ $scratches
                }
        }
        close (FOO);
        close (D);
[download]

2 example lines from the ebcat.log looks like 04/29/04 11:01:17 6687:ebexpire, ebexpire.c@7475 E01012 9840S 820 6E01C1874C2E12CA 04/29/04 11:01:17 6687:ebexpire, ebexpire.c@7475 E01093 9840S 898 9601C7263CDC2B34 thank you!