I would like to thank my fellow Monks for their input. In reading the several replies, I decided what bothered me most about messing with @_ is it violates POLA ( Principle Of Least Astonishment ). Which sometimes must be done, but in this case I will live with a slightly messier calling syntax.

Thanks to chipmunk for the prototyping suggestion - I would have never thought to do that. Unfortunately, I am in using a method call syntax and, according to the manpages, prototypes are ignored.

Special thanks to both Russ and merlyn for allowing me to specifically determine why groping @_ makes me nervous.

Mik
mikfire