Thanks all for the references, pointers and tips (I wasn't aware of that trick with highlighting a word and hitting the help button to call up Shuck). Oh, and in fairness to that 'Unix-centric' book's discussion of system('date'), the book was just introducing the concept of system calls. David Rouse ***** Want to unsubscribe from this list? ***** Send mail with body "unsubscribe" to mac-perl-request@iis.ee.ethz.ch