Roy Johnson said it earlier, but what you have is not a list, as far as Perl is concerned. Sure, it is a list of letters, in the literal sense of the term, but this is a Perl website. Using terms that have a very specific Perl meaning, but ignoring that meaning and using a more general meaning, is a recipe for disaster. You may be doing it unintentionally, but this is a fairly important concept in Perl. For more information, try running perldoc -q 'between a list' in a terminal, or see an online version at perldoc.com.