Thanks all for great suggestions. I do like kesterkester's subroutine approach because I have lots of tests, some with more conditions than others, so being able to pick and choose is nice (at the expense of all the "wiring" of subroutines). I also like the quick-fail method (I tried this with unless but couldn't get my head around it) of halley, but as applied by dragonchild. And I'm glad flyingmoose won't have to kill me, and let me see what I can do with grep or even map.