OK, thanks. But still, if $REFRESH is required to be given a value from command line, why bother setting it to 10? Why not make the command optional with a ":". This is merlyn's code so I'm assuming a guru like that would have some logic behind this but maybe I'm wrong.

$PM = "Perl Monk's";
$MCF = "Most Clueless Friar Abbot";
$nysus = $PM . $MCF;