thats pretty slick! much slicker than this patch to get_time() i put in there to stop it from erroring if i typo - as i usually wind up doing (8 there's likely a better way, but it's near 5:00pm EST, and i'm about to clock out.

sub get_time
{    my $time;
    do 
    {    print "\n-> ";
        $time = <>;
        chomp $time;
        print "\n";
        
        exit if $time =~/^q/i;
        no warnings;                # quick patch 
        next if $time =~ /([^\d])/; # please fix 
        use warnings;               # me (:
   } while ($time ne $time+0);

    return $time;
}
[download]

dont flame me too bad - i just hated to see the 'exiting subroutine via next ...' warning. it made it ugly. ):

strfry()