Thank you very much, that helps me a lot. I just have a couple of questions - if the search doesn't return anything, the script dies with a undefined hash error - I don't know how to handle that one. Also, do you know of some good beginner links where I can learn more about hashes, map, scalar, and other related items? I've googled, but I may just not be getting the terms right as I'm not getting anything that really lays it out there. Well, back to the net and these ORA books :D - thanks again!