thanks John - but what if I want to pull an element from $linex which I've broken up using the split option - that's what I'm really after....Spooky ps - Spooky is the name of my mini-cooper s (yeah - it's black!) named after one of my favorite songs performed by Classics 4 and recently recorded by Imogen Heap..just an fyi... John, When I run the following: %hash = [] ; $title = 'engineer' ; $usr = 'ewh1234' ; @mylist = (1, 2, 3) ; push @{$hash{$usr}}, ($title, @{$mylist}) ; print "$hash{$usr} [0]" ; I get the following: ARRAY(0x2001dbe0) [0] I was expecting 'engineer' - of course what I really want is to access an element with @mylist....