can't it be done without a repeatiton loop?

You want to repeat an action without a loop?

Well, I suppose you could do

from_to($menu_files[0], 'ISO-8859-7', 'UTF-8') if @menu_files >= 1;
from_to($menu_files[1], 'ISO-8859-7', 'UTF-8') if @menu_files >= 2;
from_to($menu_files[2], 'ISO-8859-7', 'UTF-8') if @menu_files >= 3;
from_to($menu_files[3], 'ISO-8859-7', 'UTF-8') if @menu_files >= 4;
die("Need more!") if @menu_files >= 5;
[download]

Does it count as a loop if the repeating is done by the person rather than the computer?

Or if all you want to do is hide the loop

sub from_to_multi {
   my $fr = shift;
   my $to = shift;
   from_to($_, $fr, $to) for @_;
}

from_to_multi('ISO-8859-7', 'UTF-8', @menu_files);
[download]

But then you end up with two loops. One to place the elements on the stack, and one to process the elements on the stack.