in reply to Re^4: How to add hyperlink for every table data using perl?
in thread How to add hyperlink for every table data using perl?

what is the purpose of (.) you added in front of every line ?

That's the string concatenation operator, see perlop. '<td><a href="' . $href_to_what{$word} . '">' . $word . '</a></td>' concatenates those five strings together into a single string. In this case it's the same as writing "<td><a href=\"$href_to_what{$word}\">$word</a></td>".