I'd just like to say thanks to everyone for their help.

I did indeed read the references tute and the perldsc which were highly illuminating. Thank you. This is of course one of those things that you can't "read the manual" about, if you don't know which part of the manual to read.

In other words, I now know what a reference is, and that a hash can't have an array in it after all, but the fact that it can have a reference to an array fixes all that. Plus some Perl 4/5 history which I didn't know. (that my hack solution, putting a comma-separated string in as the value, then split()ing it to get it back, was the only way to do it in the past).

Anyway, thanks again.
--

($_='jjjuuusssttt annootthhrer
     pppeeerrrlll haaaccckkeer')=~y/a-z//s;print;
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