honestly, you are correct, except I have already completed my assignemtn and handed it in. I specifically don't like when people use perlmonks for things like that. I was able to get my code to work, but wasn't really sure why it was working and wanted to know more.

I don't take offenses to your assumption (mostly because you were close to being right, completely because I agree with your idealology). Thank you, I will check out the tuts.