note RhetTbull Take a look at [cpan://IO::Zlib]. I believe it'll do exactly what you want -- that is, tie a compressed file and treat it like an ordinary file handle (a la [cpan://Tie::File]). In your case, I wouldn't keep the large data record compressed AND use a compressed data file -- I don't see that it buys you anything. Just use [cpan://IO::Zlib] and compress the whole file.<BR> --RT 184139 184139