Ok, I know I've made this more fun than it ought to be. I'm trying to escape all meta characters in a string. I'm sure there is a module for this or a cookbook solution, but that would be no fun. I'd like to maintain a little fun. At the risk of being shamed by the simplicity of another solution, heres mine: %meta = map {($_,1)} split('', '\|()[{^$*+?.'); $str = join('', map {if ($meta{$_}) {"\\$_"} else {$_}} split('', $str)); Ed Perry ==== Want to unsubscribe from Fun With Perl? Well, if you insist... ==== Send email to <fwp-request@technofile.org> with message _body_ ==== unsubscribe