Now that I have, with all of you helping, dealt with the unlink problem. I am now faced with a new problem.
I have a file, myfile.txt, that consists of various text items that are repetitive. I am trying to replace many of the repetitive items with a place holder. Here is an example of myfile.txt: This is a long file with sentences, paragraphs and returns. Certain portions of the file never change and are simply repetitive. I would like to replace all of the repetitive items with a placeholder...call it placey." _END FILE_ I would like to replace "This ... items" with "placey" so the above would look like: placey with a placeholder...call it "placey." When attacking this problem I thought it would be best to use hex values so as not to deal with returns, etc. myfile.txt in hex is: 54 68 69 73 20 69 73 20 61 20 6C 6F 6E 67 20 66 69 6C 65 20 77 69 74 68 20 73 65 6E 74 65 6E 63 65 73 2C 20 70 61 72 61 67 72 61 70 68 73 20 61 6E 64 20 72 65 74 75 72 6E 73 2E 20 20 43 65 72 74 61 69 6E 20 70 6F 72 74 69 6F 6E 73 0D 0A 6F 66 20 74 68 65 20 66 69 6C 65 20 6E 65 76 65 72 20 63 68 61 6E 67 65 20 61 6E 64 20 61 72 65 20 73 69 6D 70 6C 79 20 72 65 70 65 74 69 74 69 76 65 2E 20 20 49 20 77 6F 75 6C 64 20 6C 69 6B 65 20 74 6F 20 72 65 70 6C 61 63 65 20 61 6C 6C 0D 0A 6F 66 20 74 68 65 20 72 65 70 65 74 69 74 69 76 65 20 69 74 65 6D 73 20 77 69 74 68 20 61 20 70 6C 61 63 65 68 6F 6C 64 65 72 2E 2E 2E 63 61 6C 6C 20 69 74 20 22 70 6C 61 63 65 79 2E 22 Here is the little script that I am working with and, obviously, is not working: my $filefirst = "c:/perl/myfile.txt"; open(FILE,"<$filefirst") || die "Could not open file for reading! $!"; open(TEMP,">$filefirst.tmp") || die "Could not open file for writing! $!"; # I have used the . . . to show that the entire hex string is really there my $hextostr = '\x54\x68\x69\x73 . . . \x79\x2E\x22'; while(<FILE>){ $_ =~ s/$hextostr/placey/gi; print TEMP $_; } Perhaps I am attacking this problem wrong by using hex, but it seems easier to use then text which has carriage returns, tabs, and spaces. I hope this explains the situation. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]