many thanks for your help - I couldnt get your code to work, but got round it a different, less sophisticated way. Will study map and grep tho

i used

sub getClients{
    my @sortedclients;
    my @joinedarray;
    foreach(@clients){
        next if m/(^#|^$)/;
        my ($cltnbr, $cltname) = split ('   ', $_);
        my $joined = join " ", $cltname, $cltnbr;
        push @joinedarray, $joined;
    }
    foreach(@sortedclients = sort @joinedarray){
        my ($cltname, $cltnbr) = split ('   ', $_);
        print "<a href='#' title='$cltnbr' name='$cltname' onclick='fi
+llText(this);'>$cltname</a><br />";
    }
}
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