>>>>> "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