my @chars = ("a".."z", "A".."Z", 0..9 , split //, qq(!"#$%&'()*+,-./:;<=>?@[\]^_`{|}~)); #### $ perl -le 'print for split m{}, qq{!@#{}[\]&*};' ! @ # { } [ ] & * $ perl -le 'print for split m{}, q{!@#{}[\]&*};' ! @ # { } [ \ ] & * $