I have 3 books on Perl (but not the Camel book). They all dance around the important part of the topic. Now I understand what's going on (thanks to all of you who answered). So the part about stat() returning an array, and specifying which elements from the array I need to call, makes perfectly good sense. Thanks, Monks PS: I don't have the Camel book because 1. a former employer has it (grrrr) 2. I only use PERL when the task needs PERL's awesome power.