I am writing a perl script that acts like the passwd program, but is intended for my virtual pop user database. Anyway, I cant seem to find out why I cant write to a file. I will include the snipit, but I would also like to know how to debug these problems. They have poped up before, and it seems very binary, it either works or it dosnt. Is there some way to find out WHY it dosnt work? Here is the snipit: open PASSWD, '>' . $passw_file or die "There was an error opening the password file.\n"; print PASSWD "$pw_data"; close PASSWD; print "Password file updated.\n"; PS- this script is being run by root at the moment, and I double checked that the file is not in use, and that the owner can write to it. Jay