(Be warned, newbie here) I was under the impression that the literal definition of a while structure in Perl was defined in the parser as the while keyword-a parenthesized statement (that is itself further defined as any returning object, or some such) and a loop body that is delimited by curlies. Of course, there is a little rider to that that states that in some cases exceptions can be made assuming that there is no ambiguity in the current context. I would imagine that there is some ambiguity associated with a while <*.*> construct in the parser...otherwise I have been told that it would work. It could be a precedence problem, considering that the parens kick the precedence for the token up quite a bit. Course, I'm a newbie so take all of this for what you paid for it MSemich