Thanks for the replies. FormMail autogens an email from a form submission ... not quite what I have in mind although it's a possible workaround.

You're right about the equivalent of two separate POSTS ... the form action would be something like "return Form_Validator(this);" calling a JavaScript function that validates the form fields are complete, checks the text, etc. AND would ping my PERL script.

That way, I can avoid redirecting from one form to another across the wire.

Everything I can read about JavaScript indicates that if you're going to hit a URL, you're going to open a page whether you want to or not, I don't want to ... just ping the script.