The rest is easy - ord(R) == ord(E)+13, the other chars are offset -1 to the output (S,E,L -> T,F,M).

German ESEL is English DONKEY, which is why I made that up in the first place. So the thingy is only acceptable with a smiley appended... ;-)

--shmem

1)The code that link points to is from the first edition of Programming Perl (a.k.a Pink Camel)

_($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo.  G°\        /
                              /\_¯/(q    /
----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}

Right, got it now! Thanks for the explanation. I might even have got the ESEL/DONKEY joke if my German school studies were not 30+ years in the past.

Cheers,

JohnGG