Don't use s/^\s+|\s+$//g. It tries BOTH branches at EVERY chunk of whitespace. It's awfully slow compared to s/^\s+//, s/\s+$//.
Jeff japhy Pinyan,
P.L., P.M., P.O.D, X.S.:
Perl,
regex,
and perlhacker How can we ever be the sold short or the cheated, we who for every service have long ago been overpaid? ~~ Meister Eckhart