excellent, thanks for two great answers. I actually tried (! defined) but i tried it on @storeList=<FILEIN>; which did not produce the desired results at all : -(
John wrote: "The reason you are getting the warnings is because of $saveNum{$dup} on the right hand side of the expression. Use either: $saveNum{$dup}++;,..." Oddly enough, the above incrementing does not work on this example!!!! try it for yourself if you want. If you change $saveNum{$dup} =$saveNum{$dup}+1; to $saveNum{$dup} =$saveNum{$dup}++; it will not increment anything, this actually through me off for awhile because i always write ++ (not +1) ,.... well, i'll be $#%^&* i just ran the example with $saveNum{$dup} = ++$saveNum{$dup}; and it works exactly like i wanted, i didn't think that would work?!,,.... oh yeah sorry about the multipul post's of the same question, first time poster, they didn't show up for more then an hour, i didn't think they would till i joined, blah, blah,.... ;-) thanks again