Hi TIMTOWTDI

Hi perlynewby. TIMTOWTDI is an abbreviation: in this context it was there to highlight that the method I showed was different to that from kcott. I'm hippo.

I read Perl #sprintf FORMAT, LIST and could not understand how your "format STDOUT" works. Can you explain it? The Perldocs I read do not have the format you presented here for your script

You have been reading different docs. Please see the docs for format which I linked to previously and which are entirely unrelated to sprintf. Hopefully they will make it all clear. Give it a try once you have read through those and if you are still stuck please ask further.