in reply to send color text to printer

I see no reason to store your data in hashes, especially since the keys are consecutive numbers ... try arrays:
my @color = qw( black red yellow green blue cyan magenta white ); my @on_color = map "on_$_", @color; my @special = (undef,qw( dark bold underline underscore blink reverse concealed )); my @sy = ('a'..'e'); for my $w (0..8) { for my $x (0..8) { for my $y (0..4) { for my $z (0..5) { my $tmp = join(' ',$color[$x],$on_color[$w],$special[$y]); ... etc. } } } }

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)