That was it! Thanks, Chris. I was bumming on my way home from work tonight because i realized that i had posted the wrong version of the script in my post, but you found the "right" error anyway. Thanks so much! Ben >Doing <<'END_SCRIPT' is like putting the text there in single quotes, so >$time is not interpolated before being sent to Frontier. Use either ><<"END_SCRIPT" or <<END_SCRIPT, and it should work. ***** Want to unsubscribe from this list? ***** Send mail with body "unsubscribe" to mac-perl-request@iis.ee.ethz.ch