thanks to everyone who responded. it seems that Bob's /^\d+$/
works the best overall for this situation. I have a lot to learn about Perl & regex. I'm surprised that no one has put together a library of functions to handle form validation issues. it would seem that this is one of those things that needs to be done all the time. cheers, Al Hospers CamberSoft, Inc. al<at>cambersoft<dot>com http://www.cambersoft.com Shockwave and Director development, CD-ROM, HTML, CGI scripting, and Graphic Design. A famous linguist once said: "There is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative." YEAH, RIGHT -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]