thanks Dave, I've got past the "not declaring my $k further up the program" problem now :)

but it appears my problem is what "not Keith" says

>> You also seem to think that you can have multiple values for a single key. That's not true,

well in that case, I do have a problem as I want to store several lines of text against the same key like this

KEY1 07/25/05 09:04:36
KEY2 07/25/05 09:04:36
KEY2 07/25/05 09:04:37
KEY2 07/25/05 09:05:49
KEY2 07/25/05 09:05:50
KEY3 07/25/05 09:05:50
[download]

so then I can find the earliest time in KEY2 is 09:04:36 and the latest time is 09:05:50

However, now I'll have to find another way.

Thanks for your help.





p.s. I seem to have got the reply depth too deep !