And it shouldn't... . is string concatenation in perl, so perl is trying to concatenate barewords... with => perl allows you to not quote the string on the left, but only very simple strings without . or spaces and the like... put your left hand side strings in quotes and all will be well...
Yes this worked a treat (and I had tried it before!). Of course it worked properly *after* I realised there was a horrendus typo in the LWP request.......
D'OH!
Bukowski - aka Dan (dcs@black.hole-in-the.net)
"Coffee for the mind, Pizza for the body, Sushi for the soul"
-Userfriendly