Because this has gotten completely off of the original question IE: WHICH OF THESE TWO STATEMENTS RUN FASTER: if( x eq y ) or if( x =~ y ) and has, instead, gotten into "my way of doing things is better than your way." I believe we should take this to e-mail so the list doesn't get cluttered up with this. So if you want to continue this battle - e-mail me. I will be very happy to continue lobbing e-mail back and forth with whomever wishes to do so. But I believe the postings should stop. Chris answered this question for me quite clearly. The "eq" is quite a bit faster than the "=~" statement and I _do_ plan on changing over several statements in programs to it. See you in e-mail. ***** Want to unsubscribe from this list? ***** Send mail with body "unsubscribe" to mac-perl-request@iis.ee.ethz.ch