Thanks. Works perfectly. Any chance I could prevail upon you to explain the use of map instead of passing the ref (\@list) to a()?

Is it because passing the list ref means that the enumeration of the elements is done out of my scope?

I can see where I was going wrong with the [], I was using them inside the ()'s instead of as a replacement for them. (back to perlref to try and understand why I should do this, but its always easier to understand working code than see whats wrong with non-working).

Regards.

Sure, i will discuss the a() shortcut and let you apply it to the others.

Each shortcut takes an optional reference to a list and distrubutes it across each element. That you know, but when you try to do this via:

a( {-href=>$_ }, \@list )
[download]

the default variable is not 'associated' with the list reference. Indeed, the enumeration of the elements is done outside of your scope.

The only way (that i know of) to 'associate' it is to use a loop instead:

for (@list) {
   print a({-href=>$_},$_);
}

# or
print a({-href=>$_},$_) for @list;

# or
print map {a({-href=>$_},$_) } @list;
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jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)

Thanks again. The murk is thinning slowly, just rather more slowly than I would care to admit.