I appreciate the help and insight, everyone. I have a lot of information to read through to get a better idea of how BETTER to do things of this nature.

I don't know why it did not dawn on me that slurping a huge file (my @blah = <DICT>) would be suicide as opposed to reading it line by line directly and pulling off only things I need.

I probably should have figured that one out, but I do appreciate all the valuable advice everyone has put here.