Thanks for the pointer -- looks like they only have 32-bit right now.

I get spoiled when, *rarely*, I need to read in a multi-gig file and not have it spill to memory.

Also, windows usually runs a bit behind linux in terms of perl... Cygwin is still at 5.14, and I was going to suggest 5.16.3, myself, as I have a rather large code base that is incompatible with with some of the new 5.18 features.

As Murphy would have it, most of my small scripts and library routines aren't hit with the problem. The ones that are hit, are the larger(2-3k lines) and more complicated ones that do things like create and destroy file systems and partitions on a daily basis -- i.e. ones where you don't want anything to go wrong or rush through changes, and unfortunately, there was no way provided for a compatible upgrade (i.e. turn off the new conflicting features by default). Sigh.