If I leave off the "$text=chr(hex(0xa9))" line, the "©" symbol comes out as garbage. If I put that line in, I get the "©" symbol, but it is preceded by another garbage symbol. What am I doing wrong here?

You can just say $text = chr 0xa9; - no need for hex and lispishness. Then, chr 0xa9 is the copyright symbol in iso8859-1, so I suspect an encoding problem. See Encode.

Mind to post the garbage you get with and without the $text=chr(hex(0xa9)) line?

--shmem

_($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo.  G°\        /
                              /\_¯/(q    /
----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}