Hi sfink,

Your solution is succint and will most likely work as the OP intended. But, I would recommend the OP to use his/her version updated with the comments from other monks. Since the OP is new to perl, a more verbose solution instead of a succint solution may be better in terms of simplicity, understandability and maintainability.

Having said that, I would also strongly recommend the OP to try to understand the perl one-liner version - as a good learning exercise.

Regards,
Mahesh