You're assestment that I'm in the deep end of the pool is correct. My first program (after Hello) in Perl was a WEB site tester that is uses the HTTP agent, tests the site, pings the host if not found, and emails to a few people. I liked the Perl functionality and it still being low level enough for this type of work. Instead of tying up the good people here, maybe there is a site that has Perl Programmers listed and I could find one of them to help me. telling the maangers I am not the right person is fine, I just need to provide an alternative.