note jdporter <p> Trying to use a variable as a variable name (i.e. "symbolic references") is generally considered a bad idea. </p><p> There is an item in the [doc://perlfaq] about this: [http://perldoc.perl.org/perlfaq7.html#How-can-I-use-a-variable-as-a-variable-name?|How can I use a variable as a variable name?]. I highly suggest you read this. </p><p> It is considered critical enough that it is explicitly detected and forbidden by [doc://strict|use strict;] - the inclusion of which is universally considered good practice. </p><p> Instead, use a hash variable: </p> <code> my %tag_value; foreach ( @tagvalue ) { if ( /([\w,_]+):([0-9]+)/ ) { $tag_value{$1} = $2; } else { die "Failed to assign value to $1\n"; } } </code> <p> By the way I think your [doc://die] statement is going to have a problem, in that <c>$1</c> will not be set (at least not to what you think) if it ever gets executed. If the pattern match (regex) fails to match, then none of the positional variables (<c>$1</c>, etc.) get set. Instead, you might say something like: </p> <code> die "Failed to match tag/value in '$_'\n"; </code> <div class="pmsig"><div class="pmsig-170442"> I reckon we are the only monastery ever to have a dungeon stuffed with 16,000 zombies[523120|.] </div></div> 983857 983857