>>>>> "RR" == Rodney Ray <Rodney.Ray at childrenshc.org> writes:

    RR> Here is the deal. I want to use perl to ping a server and need
    RR> to get the address from a flat file that has a fix file
    RR> format. The field that I'm tring to get is the second column
    RR> in the file. Any Perl experts that could help me get this
    RR> thing working on my box. The grep4=ntharg(entry,2,\":\");\
    RR> returns the the second field but I can't get ping to use the
    RR> the grep4.

If you've got a field separator, can't you just use split to chop up
each line of the input, then grab the nth field?

Something like

open(INFILE, "/lib/local_alerts/network.config");
while (<INFILE>) {
   chomp;
   my @fields = split /$fieldsep/;
   my $target = $fields[2];
   # now I'm hazy about what you're trying to do with the ping....
   system "ping $target";
   }
close(INFILE);

of course there's a zillion ways to improve that....

R