Thanks! I needed that. Chris' Perl script to sort a file worked perfectly, right "out of the box". I can't say I understand everything in the script but I am very appreciative for his taking the time and effort to work up a solution and to post the example. I think that this is actually quite useful, and others will want to see an example of this too. So Chris, this might be one you want to put in the archives. Thanks again. - peter ***** Want to unsubscribe from this list? ***** Send mail with body "unsubscribe" to mac-perl-request@iis.ee.ethz.ch