#some values to use my @items = qw(oranges apples pears lemons kumquats); #sort 'em @items = sort @items; # we want to output, e.g. # A | D # B | E # C | # so we need the offset for D, #and a kludge to avoid warning on non-existent array elem. when printing odd num of items my $item_count = @items; my $offset = int(($item_count+1)/2); push @items, ''; map{ print "$items[$_] | $items[$_ + $offset]\n"; }0..($offset-1); #### map{$a=1-$_/10;map{$d=$a;$e=$b=$_/20-2;map{($d,$e)=(2*$d*$e+$a,$e**2 -$d**2+$b);$c=$d**2+$e**2>4?$d=8:_}1..50;print$c}0..59;print$/}0..20