BTW, you can also use eval to make subs (rather than references to subs), which is what I do quite often if I have a lot of matches to find:

sub genFind {
   my $patt = shift;
   my $code = "sub find {\n\tmy \$str = shift;\n\t\$str =~/$patt/;\n};
   eval $code;
   die "Error in eval: $@\ncode = $code\n" if $@;
}

#call
genFind ('foo');
$res = find ('barefoot'); #can now call 'find' as function
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The nice thing about this is that looks just like a normal function and you don't have to worry about '&' and stuff.

pike