> i am doing a simple mirror of HTML files from two 
seperate 
> locations on a server:
> and the output form root/basics is perfect. However the 
> output from root/columns adds hex numbers to the file 
> name!!! 

This is because the URLs have query strings embedded.

> This is happening throughout the mirror of this one 
section 
> and causes corruption of our index resulting from the 
> incorrect file being referenced or both files failing to 
> perform.

If you want only one file, you will have to filter out all 
duplicate URLs due to query strings ; such as:

-* +www.example.com/* -www.example.com/*?*

You may also want to try the "Build structure" and use an 
user-defined one, such as
%h%p/%n.%t

(without the %q, query string hash ; which are the hex 
numbers you saw)