And a style nit tangental to the die-ing: 99% of the time you don't want to use & when calling subs because it alters how the call is made (see perlsub for the gory details). Calling process( $element ) will work just fine and you'll be glad you didn't get into a bad habit and have to go chasing down why that line &spoo or warn "Zoikes!\n" is getting passed arguments.