Thanks for the advice folks, i will make the small changes you suggested. As for the main problem, it is indeed Find::File in 5.6.1 that is causing my issue. I replaced find.pm with another version and it worked ok, still like you say i am wary of File::Find now. The @ARGV thing stopped being a problem as long as i used 'perl' when executing. i.e. "perl.exe pstfind.pl arg.txt". If i just wrote "pstfind.pl arg.txt" it failed. Wonder if its because with 5.6.1 install directtory it does not like a space in the path to the bin folder. "#!c:\program files\perl\bin -w". I will have a longer look at the code you provided and see about using it instead. Thanks.