note Anonymous Monk Maybe you'd be interested in the <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=y+combinator+anonymous+recursion">Y combinator</a>. <code> #!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; print "5! = ", Y(sub{ my ($proc, $n) = @_; ($n < 2) ? 1 : $n * $proc->($proc,$n-1) }, 5), "\n"; sub Y { my ($p, $x) = @_; $p->($p,$x); } </code> 541711 541711 37