You were unlucky in debugging

* kicks self *

I looked at the source code and didn't pick that up...I must have been tired or having a senior moment!

But, it begs the question...
Should I be using this module at all?

• It hasn't been updated in 8 years
• It's unlikely to be on the target machine
• It's only used for testing
• Its documentation is virtually non-existant
• It appears unfinished

I try not to get users to install non-core modules unless really necessary. Especially for testing.

Be warned that eval()'ing things from files is a huge security hole

Is this perhaps a security hole worth accepting because it is only used in testing? So the input file is known and anyone changing the file would be potentially sabotaging themself.

You need to "undump" the file contents somehow and resurrect the Perl data structure you started with

This sounds like the perfect use for a JSON object, especially as JSON::PP is core...