Thanks for all your responses. To clarify things a bit: I of course use more verbose variable names than $d or $e. (not to speak of $a and $b :-))

My worries were not so much about the readability for an "end developer" as was stated here, but about the readability of the code by myself. As this is a long term project, I WILL have to dig through the code perhaps in 2 years. And now we all know, that perl has a little bit the reputation, that one cannot read his own code after a while.

Entry is not derived from Dictionary (or vice versa), they are completedly separated classes, DIctionary is just some kind of container for (many) Entries.

Yes, this is real-world scenario, no academic talk. 11 Languages (dictionaries) take 800MB of RAM. Long live Perls Memory Management. :-))

And this beast knows already the difference between a Monkey and a Car.

Bye
Richard