pg,
Thanks!
I am going to see if I can't get tall_man's suggestion to work. The only obvious problem is figuring out how to hack File::MergeSort to give me file name/path. I will compare this to the speed of DaveH's integration of adrianh's approach. It added a lot of overhead to the speed of the original program, though it isn't really that big of a deal since the files are being read post write.

Your option 2 looks identical to my reply to adrianh - I am also going to try my own version of this to see if I can make it any faster.

Your option 3 is interesting, but isn't viable. I am looking for a quick turn around, but I may consider it in a future revision (I really need to start working on other projects).

Cheers - L~R