You need to pass arguments to your subroutines - iterating through global datastructures by using the post increment operator is bad, bad, bad. Using a simple for loop would be more appropriate, then maybe a map.

As for your request for a subroutine to make a table that has differing numbers of columns, you will need pass the data itself as well as how many columns you want - how about passing an array ref of the data instead? Also, you might want to consider using the 'colspan' attribute to take care of those rows with a lower number of columns.

Here is a snippet to get you started:

use strict;
use CGI qw(:standard);
use CGI::Pretty;

print make_rows(
   [(1)],
   [(1..2)],
   [(1..3)],
);

sub make_rows {
   my $str;
   for (@_) {
      $str .= Tr((
         map { td($_) } @$_
      ));
   }
   return $str;
}
[download]

sub make_rows {
   @_ = map { Tr((map { td($_) } @$_)) } @_;
   return wantarray ? @_ : join('',@_);
}
[download]

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)