OK....This is almost there..... thanks for the "IN" tip.... it looked like a small correction... it's gotta be in there. .... thanks ... only one small problem... it's not doing the "OUTPUT" unfortunately.... please have a look.....

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
       $infile = shift;
       $outfile = shift;
       
       open(IN, $infile) || die("Can't open input file $infile - $!");
       open(OUT, ">$outfile") || die("Can't open output file $outfile 
+- $!");

       use strict;
       my $text;
       my @lines;
       

#my @tmp = split /:/, $lines[-1];   these two go together
#my $last = $tmp[3];                 as an alternate way of doing this
+ routine
#                                    learn this in next attempt
     
       while (<IN>) {
         push @lines;
         shift @lines if @lines > 10;
       }

       chomp(@lines);

       my @cols;
       my $total = 0;

       for (@lines) {
         @cols = split /:/;
         $total += $cols[3];
       }
       my $average = $total / (@lines || 1);
         # if no lines, avoid division by zero

       my $last = (split /:/, $lines[-1])[3];

 $text = "Average of column 3 for the last " .
                              scalar(@lines) . " days: $average\n";   
+    
  $last ="Last value in Col3" . scalar(@lines) . " value: $last\n";

      print OUT "$text\n";
      print OUT "$last\n";

    
       close IN;
       close OUT ;
  
   
<\code>
 The message in the log file reads.....

<code>

Average of column 3 for the last 0 days: 0

Last value in Col30 value:
[download]

Lights are flashing on my machine.... files are poping on the screen.... this is good.... but what am I missing .... all the values read "0" or are " " blank I have run this script through the Perl Builder debugger and it does not indicate errors...which is too bad. There are obviously still some errors in here. Would someone please have a look.... Thanks Joachim