note aaron_baugher <p> You could change your <c>clean</c> sub so it takes an array and returns an array. Then you can 'pipe' your data through it: </p> <c> #!/usr/bin/env perl use Modern::Perl; sub clean { for (@_){ s/^\s+//; s/\s+$//; # this includes chomp } return @_; } my $str = 'The | quick | brown | fox | jumped| over | the | lazy | dog. '; say for clean split /\|/, $str; </c> <div class="pmsig"><div class="pmsig-597736"> <p>Aaron B.<br /> Available for small or large Perl jobs; see my home node. </p> </div></div> 997827 997827