(Forgive the excitement) I just reversed the %n2m construct - the original builds a hash using map that lets you convert numbers to months, etc. (I probably found it here).
In keeping with my feeling that with 'map' one can do almost anything (if I knew how) I'm happy to have managed to build something using 'map' (without external help I mean). Seems easy, now. ;-) # months into numbers... $month = "Jan" # for example my %m2n; my $x = "00"; map { $m2n{$_} = ++$x } qw(Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec); my $mon = $m2n{$month}; # and the monstrosity it replaced... my %months = ( Jan => "01", Feb => "02", Mar => "03", Apr => "04", May => "05", Jun => "06", Jul => "07", Aug => "08", Sep => "09", Oct => "10", Nov => "11", Dec => "12" ); my $mon = $months{$month}; # -K (peace and quiet here for a while - I'm off for two+ weeks vacation) -- Kevin Pfeiffer International University Bremen -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]