my $homes=join(" |",@la);
#print $homes;
my @pipes;
my $pos;
while ($homes =~ m/\|/g){
  push @pipes, pos($homes)-1;
}
my $numps=scalar(@pipes);
my $ptr= $numps-int($numps/2); #no ceil() function in perl
substr($homes,$pipes[$ptr],1,"<br>");#not catching rv--is that bad?
print $homes;