grantm: Yes, when I wrote "non-standard modules" I did mean modules that are not included in the standard distribution.

The main reasons for the restriction are that I would have no control over which modules the web host has installed, I hope to use it on more than one host/site and if it turns out to be really useful I may make it available to others.

My own modules, if used, would reside in the same directory as the program, would not need root access to install and would only contain code that would actually be used by the main program.

Perhaps they wouldn't as thoroughly tested on multiple platforms, but they would be unlikely to contain anything platform specific anyway considering they will be developed on one O/S for use on another.

Perhaps Linux is free, disk space however is not, and I only have a 6Mb drive on the laptop I will be using. It is also doubtful that I could easily find all the hardware drivers I would need.

I have considered setting up some sort of UNIX O/S on a desktop machine I rarely use, as that has much more disk space, but only has a P133 CPU (and an aging monitor). It is not connected to the Internet however, and I have no experience of using UNIX at the command line, making that one more thing I'd have to learn.

pfaut: The modules included with the Windoze version of Perl do differ slightly, but luckily I have a book that lists the ones common to both. I can always use PerlDiver on the host to make sure they are there at least.