Hello Tangent

Many thanks for that. I wish I'd checked back sooner to read your post. As it happens I have spent my evening working out to the same as what you have described (well nearly).

When you say 'alien style', what do you mean and could you give me an example please (unless the 'could be written as' was an example) of a non-alien approach ?

To someone who has not experienced Perl, some of the 'folded' code (or is that better worded as more concise, efficient, performant, proficient - I do not know) can make it difficult to read/understand. Therefore I like the alternative you presented in the 'could be written as' piece - that to me is much more presentable if nothing else.

I have coded in the past (not in Perl), but not to any advanced levels, so is the approach of [crudely dropping out?] 'exit-ing' from a program in a sub routine acceptable ?

Lastly, for what it is as such, are there 'better' coding approaches to achieve what is being done, or is it fairly decent technique (accepting there is no security etc)?

Thank you for taking time to respond; thank you to all - I have moved on a little and the references given to me earlier are proving enlightening, if a little challenging also - particularly one that led to a piece that touched on lexical code referencing (lambda style) coupled with OO style in relation to anonymous subs! - well I think that was what it was about :-)

Perl is *very* flexible! That would seem fair to say.