Wow. Cool.

I was worried it wouldn't work, since your test wasn't testing the same thing as mine. (The warnings were a side channel indication of the fact that 'less' was stopping 'perl'). But, it seems to do the trick. Thanks a bundle.

...Except now I'm confused. How does it work? What is buf(.pl) doing that prevents 'less' from stopping it? or that forces 'less' to keep reading? I'm kind of back to my initial question from another angle: what is 'less' doing to 'perl' that indicates to 'perl' that it should pause its output?