Definite agreement... reverse $foo = "merlyn"; makes little to no sense. However, chop reverse $foo; does seem relatively reasonable... (though I see how it quickly goes to hell in a handbasket.) I remember when in my Data Structures in C++ class they tried explaining the reason to overload some operators as lvalues, and some not... it always seemed like you could *find* a scenario where you may want that functionality (though I doubt 2 + 2 = $foo; would ever be a good one :) Well... thanks to everyone for the answers! I am going to agree that it really makes very little sense to let reverse return an lvalue... though I think the obfuscation "value" alone may warrant it :)