Thanks for your reply. I first reran the installation program and did a "repair" install with no success. Then I ran Add/Remove Programs and uninstalled ActiveState, reinstalled it, and the dir version posted above ran perfectly. It seems that a buggy ActiveState installation program is to blame.

An important test will come tomorrow since I don't have "map" on my home computer. I'll un/reinstall ActiveState at work tomorrow, try my first example program and post an update regarding `map` results. Thanks again, also to everyone else that replied.

@a=split??,'just lose the ego and get involved!';
for(split??,'afqtw{|~'){print $a[ord($_)-97]}