It's a shortcut for assigning words to an array. That statement would return an array that looks roughly like this: ('"stuff",', '"more stuff",', '"even more stuff"') # Note the double quotes. Something like ("stuff","more stuff","even more stuff"); # was likely intended, without qw(). Search for 'qw/STRING/' in perlop perldoc for more information. -----Original Message----- From: Nichole Bialczyk [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2001 4:39 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: qw i'm trying to work my way throuh an existing script and it says @array = qw("stuff", "more stuff", "even more stuff"); what does the qw do? thanks, nichole