Fair enough. Perhaps I am setting too high an expectation on the docs. The systems I worked on most recently have too trivial a usage of threads to be pushing the boundaries. So perhaps I should try creating a test set (destruction-testing ;)) for all the methods in the threads space - that might reveal whether there are specific problems that could be documented away - in my world there is such thing as a documentation problem i.e. what appears to be a bug isn't so long as it's documented properly - but for now I can't get past the fact that although some others clearly see it differently, I stare at those words and it's as if it is saying to me: 'abandon hope all ye who enter here!' - I can't remember anything else in perldoc that reads back at me anything even close to that.