You said: "In the case of the for loop you are correct but, for the @units references I want *that* specific array element each time, and the format does not change. How would I get around that?"

You could at least use a variable instead of the number "5", and give it a speaking name. Hardcoded numbers are a Bad Thing. You should probably search for all other numbers than "1" or "0" in your scripts and replace them by variables.

If you are interested in good programming style, please do yourself a favor and read one or more of these books:

• Code Complete. A Practical Handbook of Software Construction. Steve McConnell. Microsoft Press, 1993. See, there are good things coming from Microsoft ;-). Really a classic, this book is the best reference on small-scale development processes I have read till now. Very solid and balanced advice. A great section on naming conventions. Very good discussions on various coding issues, with good literature pointers for further reading. Some people will tell you this is outdated, but this is wrong.
• The Elements of Programing Style. 2nd Ed. Kernighan and Plaugher. McGraw-Hill, 1978. Very good tutorial on coding practices. Rather dated by now, and incovenient to read because of its use of Fortran and PL/1 as example languages. On the other hand, the lessons still apply to any of the more modern languages, and the book is rather cheap, so it's still nice to have.
• The Practice of Programming. Brian W. Kernighan and Rob Pike. Addison-Wesley, 1999. A worthy successor to The Elements of Programming Style. Very readable, and a good treatment of many basic issues in professional programming.

Christian Lemburg
Brainbench MVP for Perl
http://www.brainbench.com

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