Ok gang, NM on the post, i figured it all out. It is a XOR againt the ActiveState Copyright string.

For future reference to others who may have this problem, my version of perlapp is 2.0, and i have discovered that the current version (5.0) does not use the simple XOR against the key string algorithm. 5.0 seems to be using a random key that is encoded into the code itself and it also stuffs the script with alot of other information that may obscure the script itself.

Many thanks to those who helped out and special thanks to all those who participated in A real challenge.<\p>