Hi

I think the problem is mine. I know my knowledge of the language is wafer thin. I recognised that my coding was poor, which is why I came here for advice. Although professionally I direct IT based projects, I haven't seen code, or coded, as part of my job for decades. My last major IT project was for a bank where the application compiled to 22GB in size. It wasn't written in perl. I never met either the vendor or bank programmers. Too many layers of management between them and I. So I only get to actually touch code as a hobby in isolation. The absence of contact with professional programers does nothing to improve my own coding.

I get a little testy when software doesn't match the claims on the brochure and simply doesn't work when it should. I can see that perl is good for getting down in the weeds and gluing systems together. I can also see that modules are a great way of creating Lego blocks that get the job done without reinventing wheels. I was a little frustrated to find language defects and only half built Lego blocks (modules) for a task as simple as updating a Linux/Unix config file. Something I suspect is a routine part of a perl programmers role. It is what it is and I am who I am.