Truly amazing (from searchcat.pl). Why bother with %metacache and $uri inside this subroutine? sub metadata { my ($uri,$what)=@_; my %metacache; $uri=&declutter($uri); my $filename=$uri; $uri=~s/\.meta$//; $uri=''; unless ($metacache{$uri.'keys'}) { I am cleaning up this script. -- Scott Harrison, sharrison@users.sourceforge.net