On Wed, May 30, 2001 at 03:38:35PM -0500, Nichole Bialczyk wrote: > 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? perldoc perlop: qw/STRING/ Returns a list of the words extracted out of STRING, using embedded whitespace as the word delimiters. It is exactly equivalent to split(' ', q/STRING/); In this case, qw is being misused. The code there is equivalent to: $array[0] = '"stuff",' ; $array[1] = '"more' ; $array[2] = 'stuff",' ; $array[3] = '"even' ; $array[4] = 'more' ; $array[5] = 'stuff"' ; What was probably intended is the equivalent of: $array[0] = "stuff" ; $array[1] = "more stuff" ; $array[2] = "even more stuff"; In which case the qw should just be dropped, the quoting is sufficient. Michael -- Administrator www.shoebox.net Programmer, System Administrator www.gallanttech.com --