Happy to be of service.

Now, your number one take-away from all this should be ... use strict; use warnings; !!

Perl is one of those very-powerful tools in which “the price you pay” is that sometimes it is not immediately obvious what it is actually doing, because it tends to assume that you do understand.   While this is a perfectly valid approach for The Implementors to have taken, it can also spell a lot of frustration “when, in fact, you don’t. understand.”   (That certainly was the case for me!   So, mind you, I am not being “an apologist” here!   Merely a bringer of Fair Warning...)   HTH.™