I wrote my first post before the update. Also, even in the context of the OP's update, it is still impossible to write perl in Perl (if this were an assignment handed out to me @work I'd go look for an employer/client who isn't barking mad. Crazy people sometimes pay the bills handsomely, but never for very long, and certainly not long enough for such a project). You need to understand that "impossible" can mean "impossible in practice" and in respect to the OP's question that is the only definition that makes sense (as I explained in my last post).