wow, how silly my mistake was. I was forgetting to put in the package main; at the end of the "module". I guess I was thinking the 1; would automagically put me back in main, but I don't know why...

I agree that the OO syntax is cleaner and wanted to use it. Both OO and non suffered from my oversight, though. anyway, here's what I am going with:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict; 

package try;

sub new {
    my $self = {};
    $self->{SQL} = 'select name from v$database;';
    bless $self, 'try';
    return $self;
}

package main;

my $getit = try->new;

system("echo \'$getit->{SQL}\' | sqlplus -s system/manager");
[download]

Thanks =]

We speak the way we breathe. --Fugazi