i've added the function.

Perl disagrees.

adding 'sub trim;' to the top of my script gets rid of this error.

sub trim; shifts the problem. As you can see, it didn't fix anything.

I'm not sure why you keep making me guess. If *your code* doesn't work, show it!

thanks. the current version of the code

sub trim;
...
    my ($error) = 0;
    my @other_addresses = map trim, split( /\n/, $email_list );
        foreach (@other_addresses) {
        my $ok = Email::Valid->address($_);
        $error++ if(!$ok);
        print "address($_) = $ok<br>";
        print "error ".$error."<br>";
        }

    $error_message .= "$error Email list contains an invalid email add
+ress.<br>" if ($error > 0);

...
sub trim {
   my ($s) = @_;
   for ($s) {
      s/^\s+//;
      s/\s+$//;
      return $_;
   }
}
[download]

gives me

address() =
error 1
address() =
error 2
There was an error with your form submission.

2 Email list contains an invalid email address.
[download]

it looks like $_ is not getting populated with an email address.