Thanks to all 3 of you for the replies. The fact that all of you agreed on the proper syntax for the push made your answers particularly convincing. Before I checked back, I had gotten the compiler to accept @{$$items2show_ref [ARRAYX]} which may be the same semantics as @{$items2show_ref->[ARRAYX]}, but I changed to the latter form on the grounds that it is less ugly, and may be more correct as well. Thanks, cmac