It's not much consolation, but it should work. Perl should be forcing your variables into numerical context if necessary, so that the comparison shd be ok with either == or eq. I'd be interested to see how $this_category is defined, but I've tried defining it all different ways and I can only get your error message by defining it as "04"!

I'm using ActivePerl 5.6.1.629, however, which may make the difference.

§ George Sherston