I have the following statement and it works fine; list1 = glob.glob('*.dat')
however I now have an additional requirement the the string must begin with any form of "UNQ,Unq,unq,..." as an example if I had the following four files in the directory: unq123abc.dat xy4223.dat myfile.dat UNQxyc123489-24.dat only unq123abc.dat and UNQxyc123489-24.dat would be selected I have read through the documentation and I am now sooooo confussedddddd!! Len Sumnler -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list