1) prety sure if u dont return anything it doesnt log a line (or logs a blank line)

2) I have had no trouble writing to any/all debug files, hash tables could be utilized i never said they couldnt I just ddint see the point, the data is linial (sp?) in nature so suits a window rather than a hashtable

3) Since you would need to have a finer resolution tan seconds, you would need [servername + date + time + index] to cover each second debug comes in , this in turn would require you to do a lot of $hfind's or use a lot of $hget().item's to read the data back for any purpose. again the data is far more suited to a linial storage.