Oh, you're absolutely right. As I said above, it's very nasty - for all kinds of reasons.

As for the list/scalar context problem, you could do something like:

print "The current date is @{[scalar localtime]}.\n";
[download]

But I really wouldn't recommend it :)

--
<http://www.dave.org.uk>

"Perl makes the fun jobs fun
and the boring jobs bearable" - me