Thank you very much toolic. Your assistance was really appreciated. I will read up on the links, but an initial glance tells me I've a long way to go before I understand half of it. Couple of questions. Not sure I understood your reference to fat commas - they were in fact colons - but your code worked in any event. What was the returned data, was it a hash or an array? I need to read something a little easier than perldsc to understand the code you posted. Once again thank you for helping Best wishes. James.