cheers. yer i have been reading many tutorials but was unable to grasp what I was trying to achieve. one for thing i was wondering: if i was to extend the some of the information in the .txt file e.g: Tag: ref1 Type: Book Author: Smith, J Publisher: New Books Chapter: 12 could i adapt the code so "any other information" is put into the hash rather than having set information like author or type? thanks -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.