Thanks for the excellent explanation :)

With regards to the error line numbers: there aren't any errors anymore - it just doesn't produce the desired results. I have a feeling it's quite a ways away as well - your approach is far clearer.

One question about the split if it's fed data like:

It will choke on the second entry. How would I go about avoiding this? I could use something like split/","/; which would make problems far less likely, but is there a better way? Some sort of notation for when it's inside the field?