Thank you. This is exactly the type of answer I was looking for.

I agree with the "not intended for everyday use." Simple assignment of @args = @DB::args or @args = map {Carp::format_arg($_)} @DB::args can cause a blow up. A case we see a lot is when there is a single argument with a value of undef. It happens occasionally - but it does happen. Kind of frustrating when a cluck that is supposed to debug info takes the entire script down. Wish I had an easily duplicatable code snippet for you - but usually there is a bit of a caller trace involved.

Thanks again.

my @a=qw(random brilliant braindead); print $a[rand(@a)];