Careful, jryan, there are uses of SPLICE that are valid for fixed-length arrays, to whit, where scalar(@list)==$length. Also, BTW, for a very different implementation of this same idea, read perltie; the example for arrays is none other then a length-limited array. (Not quite the same thing -- this requires there always be exactly N elements; the class in perltie requires there be at most N elements. The difference is rather pendatic.)