Jeff Pinyan writes: > my @list = @{ shift() }; My solution to @{shift} being interpreted as @shift: @{+shift} It's one less char than shift(). Don't throw away bytes. You could feed a Third World cluster of four with the bytes one American programmer wastes in a day! Nat ==== Want to unsubscribe from Fun With Perl? Well, if you insist... ==== Send email to <fwp-request@technofile.org> with message _body_ ==== unsubscribe