I've been trying to digest the information above and I've been playing around with the suggestions with success.

In my original post, I did leave out some information mainly because I didn't want the full "answer" to be given as I have to put effort into this as well. In trying to apply the information above as well as trying to do my own reading, I'm trying to understand array's and how it will and can apply to the full need.

The one function that I did leave out was that I will be neededing to compare email addresses from the current list of users against a nightly generated file of the same formate to make sure that the email adddresses haven't changed.

example format of both files is:
userid emailaddress@here.com

I realize that this will be seperate coding, but I was thinking I could use the same hashes, just add the email addresses to them.
am I thinking along the correct lines?

mn