Et al -

Thanks for the many suggestions. It's my limited knowledge of perl that results in my current code. I appreciate the overwhelming support from those that do this on a more regular basis. I think that the suggestions I have gotten here will allow me to make my code smaller, more reliable, and easier to understand. It has been particularly the use of multidimensional arrays, hashes and references that has gotten me confused here. I'll clean things up and post back. Thanks again!!