#First line, does as you said; #uc sqrt hex chr lstat evals to 0, and open w/ string #appends $ in front, so it opens $0, aka, yourself die unless print keys %j and open uc sqrt hex chr lstat; #~~<0>; 0 is the filehandle, so it reads in one line #...the two negations(~~) cancel each other out, by the way #You assign to @_, ignoring q, y, i, x, d, ;, and % #(since, I presume, they aren't in the string you print out) @_[0..100] = grep{!/[qyixd;%]/}split//,~~<0>; #Simple enough, set output sep., to rec. sep, i.e., \n $\=$/; #Here's where the magic takes place. print substr join( #First, you map the @_ array that you assigned to for #values 0..46; you sort them w/ z sub, dereferencing them #And then you map them, again dereferencing $&, map{$$_[$[]} sort{z($$a[1])<=>z($$b[1])} map{[$_[$_],$_]}0..46),23; #This function (taking your ref. to ref. to match, divided # by ref. to ref. to ref. to match plus 1..$=, i.e., 1..60 #You've arranged it so as to pop the values you need to to #get the correct result; It's difficult to figure out at #first glance, however, so I'll leave it for someone else #to inform us of. sub z {@h[18,28,6,12,13,20,3,23,33,35,0,10,1,9,5,32,4,8,39,45, 29,14,15,40]= (1+\\///\\\//..$=);$h[pop];}