Any advice on good point and shoot for dark pictures

[Groucho]

So would you then say a p&s with manual controls is the better choice? my canon has manual and the panasonic does not.
but i never learned how to use any on the canon anyway, just always picked a "scene" mode.
i do have some shots from a wedding last night, that i took with the Lumix.
i need to get them into this puter first, then i will post them

There's no great answer for this...

For example, a Fuji F40fd, with very few manual controls, will take better low-light photos than a more advanced PnS camera, thanks to a larger sensor. No matter how good a photographer is or how much control there is, you are sometimes going to be unavoidably limited by the camera, mostly in a situation where you need to take a photo of a moving subject in low light without a flash.

Now, if you are comparing two very similar PnS cameras, with the same megapixels and the same sensor size, chances are that you'll be better off with the one with more manual controls (specifically aperture priority and shutter priority.)