The wonderful folks at perlmonks come through again. Thank you very much for all your help.

P.S. In case you were wondering why I asked about the first snippet (which was easily testable, as you pointed out), it just seemed a little hack-ish and I wanted to make sure there weren't going to be any unforseen consequences. The real question I wanted to ask was the second one, which seemed a much cleaner implementation (especially if I need to pass in a second array).

Thanks again for all of your help, everyone.

JAslightlybetterPH