Thanks, Corion. Perl and Python are already on - otherwise I'd be having nightmares about JS, ugh - but yeah, installing anything more would be like dentistry. On black mambas. Without anesthetic or restraints. Straight Perl is best, methinks.

And I think you've got me shifted onto the right track: I'll have to reformat the second table to make it work as you describe... which was the key to solving the whole thing. Like so:

# From this -
weight     area    cost
1              2          3.17
2              2          3.87
3              2          4.51
4              2          5.22

# To THIS:
$cost{2} = {
                      1     => 3.17,
                      2     => 3.87,
                      3     => 4.51,
                      4     => 5.22,
                      [...]
};
[download]

at which point, it solves itself. Thanks tons!

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