I don't think I understand the reason for x sub. Is it just to keep track of how many operations the script does?

The "x" sub has two purposes:

1. I don't want to use "or die" with every command, so I want an easy-to-type command to do these assertions for me (have a look at Carp::Assert - the difference here is that my "x" calls shouldn't be left out).
2. I want some output to see if the script does anything and I don't want a lot of print commands. The counter has no real purpose.

It's just laziness :)

Also, do you get many emails to your spamtrap? I've always wondered how effective those were.

On spamcollector_perlmonks@juerd.nl, I get 5 or 6 messages per day. For some reason, PerlMonks spammers are smarten than others, because over 15% of all messages to spamcollector_perlmonks@juerd.nl was not flagged by SpamAssassin already, while other than that I hardly ever have false negatives!

Juerd # { site => 'juerd.nl', plp_site => 'plp.juerd.nl', do_not_use => 'spamtrap' }