Hello all, I have a perl question which is somewhat related because I'm trying to write a mod_perl script but I'm stuck with this. I need to search a flat file for either a specific user name, or for all users. what I want to do is something like this... ... if ($user_name =~ /all/) { $regexp_string = "^[a-zA-Z]+"; } else { $regexp_string = $user_name; } foreach $key (sort keys %tickets) { print "$key\t$ticket{$key}\n" if ($key =~ /$regexp_string/); } I thought I've done this before but I can't find an example of it. What am I missing here? This is really a basic perl question but I need a quick answer and I don't have anywhere else to turn at the moment. Thanks & regards, Ron