# last mod: Wed Aug 20 2003 23:08 UTC
 # by [Intrepid], with quality tweaking by [broquaint] ;-)
sub max_strl {
     UNIVERSAL::isa( (my $h = shift) , 'HASH')
	   or die "Must pass a hashref!\n";
     my $ml = 0; length > $ml and $ml = length
           for ( @_ ? keys %$h : values %$h );
     return $ml;
}