2 comments. I use: $debug = 20; print "debug info here\n" if $debug > 5 print "even more info here\n" if $debug > 10 etc. which lets me turn on and off levels of debug during the process (e.g. subroutines can dump details or just announce their presence as they get 'better' throughout the scripting). I try to write these sorts of debug stmts at the beginning and leave them in (often for years ;-) as experience shows I'll need them later and often need to turn them back on or bump the levels back up as things change. The other thing I just saw was somebody wrote all there constant comparisons: if ( 6 == $value ) { ... claiming that this "catches" the missing "=" problem at compile time (can't do 6 = $value) w/o the -w. Not sure I believe its a good thing (ugly for one, reads wrong) and not sure '6' shouldn't be $value_if_this sort of constant somewhere (in most cases) but the fellow is very accomplished programmer so take it for what you will. a