That'll do the trick O:-)

You have the right idea, you just need a different operator - print 'a', '!' x 5; will do it. Though Perl doesn't care, I prefer not to use double quotes unless I expect interpolation to be taking place.

print "a@{['!' x 5]}";  # :-)
[download]

print 'a'.'!'x5;
[download]

use strict;
use warnings;

use Benchmark q{cmpthese};

my $nullFile = q{/dev/null};
open my $nullFH, q{>}, $nullFile
   or die qq{open: $nullFile: $!\n};

my $rcConcat = sub
   {
       print $nullFH q{a} . q{!} x 5 for 1 .. 10000;
   };

my $rcList = sub
   {
       print $nullFH q{a}, q{!} x 5 for 1 .. 10000;
   };

cmpthese (-3,
   {
      Concat     => $rcConcat,
      List       => $rcList,
   });

close $nullFH
   or die qq{close: $nullFile: $!\n};
[download]

and the output from 10 runs.

Cheers,

JohnGG

"Multiple exclamation marks are a sure sign of a diseased mind." (Terry Pratchet: Eric). ;)