Hey, all; thanks for the replies - reading data in one slurp vs line by line was the issue. In my perl programs, when reading files, I generally do it all in one swell foop and will probably end up doing so again in this case due to the layout of the text; but, that's my issue.
Thanks again. I appreciate the tip. Doug O'Leary -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list