In this article, electron-beam metrology is applied to the dimensional control of an x-ray mask replication process for a feature size down to 0.15 mum. This task was accomplished by using an e-beam writer in the metrological mode. Backscattered electrons resulting from the e-beam scanning on mask gold absorbers are collected by an annular channel plate detector and the metrological information is extracted by means of a custom linewidth algorithm. Statistical samples of data are collected for each gold absorber feature, both for master and replicated masks. Masks are inspected by taking measurements point by point, in each spatial location of the layout. Then, the gold features replicated by experimental chemically amplified x-ray negative resists, are directly compared to the master mask ones. All the relevant statistical parameters for either master or replica masks were obtained by this method. The metrology experiment allowed the study of an x-ray mask replica process for linewidth control within 50 nm in the range of 0. 15-2 mum feature sizes. Moreover, mask absorbers as small as 0.15 mum were inspected with a precision of 15 nm (3sigma) by this method.