'purport'! You are suggesting that I'm not testing? Or is this one of those pond translation errors? Must be since I'm clearly posting results. Good point about strict and warnings They are an artifact of a 'new' file in my editor. Could you give an example of 'add a multiplier loop inside the subroutine'? While I still insist that I'm looking for better ways to pre-chop, learning about benchmarking is both fascinating and useful.
--hsm
"Never try to teach a pig to sing...it wastes your time and it annoys the pig."