Thanks for the quick response, Krambambuli! It took me a little time to see what you were doing with this code (I'm still very new at this) but now I get it. Creating the hash keys on the fly is a very elegant solution, and one that hadn't occurred to me! I was planning on starting with a pre-formed hash but I can see now there's really no need to. That's why I like coming here - so many great ideas!

Thanks for the heads-up on Data::Dumper. I'm going to go download the POD for it and see if I can figure out how to use it.

Thanks again!

Tom