the aa.navy.somethingoranother.mil site...software section.

Google NAVY MICA

I wonder if it'd be easier for EQF to simply ask for the old 1.0 web version and run it in his own server - call the app locally (that the Navy used to offer online) with queries from the shell and save the calculation output to a txt file.

(do this with PHP often using %php -f /tmp/shellorientedphpscript.php) do output to a local file instead of the web console. PHP is not strictly restricted to sending output back to the client browser window.

That'd be my approach instead of trying to learn a whole new scripting language such as PERL. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if there are raw data files on the current CD that could be used with a little custom app to bypass MICA entirely...

I also wonder if EQF understands that PERL is first and foremost a scripting langugage - not really a true or complete programming language in the Pascal, C, C++, or JAVA sense.

Arrays are limited both in size and complexity as opposed to the above noted languages - the real power in scripting languages is in pulling output from similtaneous and often incompatble apps and prompting further inputs back to them even across platforms. (The art of SysAdmin really...) Sounds like EQF is doing a little of this already - but some of it unneccessarily? (I've been accused of this on the job...it's pretty common...)

If I sound a little confused really...I am...because I'm really not even 70% certain what EQF is trying to do here...a flow chart with step by step objectives would certainly help.

=8-)