Cool, I was already working the new line split method but was hoping there was a better way. If I do the split line method I am going to have to refer to each line as $var[0], etc which is what I was trying to get around. And I also never hand assign $_ either but was just one variant I was workjing with at the time of the copy and paste to here. I usually create a scalaer variable of the same name of the array so I do not get lost later. Anyway thanlx for the input but I guess there is no other way then the way I thought about doing it in the first place.