thanks so much deegee thats what i was looking for smile. and thanks very much Lpfix5 for adding your input as well both of you guyz keep up the good fight! laugh

and also thanks for the dialog suggestion, i think i'll go with that since i have another little issue that i'm gonna fix. and the !$isdir thing, yes that was an over sight so thanks for pointing that out.....

okay now i have come across another problem... in the never ending process of trial an error i've decided to use two variables in my script they are called %searchmovie and
%movietitle,%searchmovie is for my search criteria and
%movietitle is for my selection..

this is what i'm encountering when i start my search i call the my_imdb dialog and input what i want to search for. that becomes a variable 1 of the two i mentioned, and that brings up the result dialog. when i select and click continue on the result dialog it sets the second variable which is used to actually get the information i seek. now with that said... i'm haveing two problems..
problem 1
Code:
on *:dialog:my_imdb:sclick:*: {
  if ($did == 16) {
    set %searchmovie $did(2)
    did -r $dname 2
    if $isfile($+(imdb\,$remove(%movietitle,$chr(32)),.hsh)) {
      hmake $remove(%movietitle,$chr(32)) $+ .hsh 
      hload $remove(%movietitle,$chr(32)) $+ .hsh $+(imdb\,$remove(%movietitle,$chr(32)),.hsh)
      did -ra $dname 3 %movietitle 
      did -ra $dname 4 $hget($remove(%movietitle,$chr(32)) $+ .hsh,Director)
      did -ra $dname 5 $hget($remove(%movietitle,$chr(32)) $+ .hsh,Genre)
      did -ra $dname 7 $hget($remove(%movietitle,$chr(32)) $+ .hsh,Tagline)
      did -ra $dname 1 $hget($remove(%movietitle,$chr(32)) $+ .hsh,Plot)
      did -ra $dname 6 %hget($remove(%movietitle,$chr(32)) $+ .hsh,Runtime)
    } 
    else {
      if (!$hget($remove(%movietitle,$chr(32)) $+ .hsh)) hmake $remove(%movietitle,$chr(32)) $+ .hsh
      movieinfo
    } 
  }
}

in this part of the code, how would i be able to check for a match in the imdb folder.. i want to not only check to see if there was a previous search but also if it matches the item being search for.. how would this be done?

problem 2
Code:
on *:dialog:result:sclick:*: {
  if ($did == 2) { 
    if $did($dname,1,1).sel { set %movieinfolink2 $line(@imdb,$v1) | set %movietitle $did(1).seltext }
    if !$hget($remove(%movietitle,$chr(32)) $+ .hsh) { hmake $remove(%movietitle,$chr(32)) $+ .hsh }
    sockopen movieinfo2 www.imdb.com 80 
 }
}

this part of my script is the culprit, i guess. anywho.. it sets the variable %movietitle when i make my selection, but i'm not sure how to release the item after i'm done with it... so as it stands now when i go to search, it recalls the %movietitle variable..
any suggestions and assistance would be appreciated on these..