the pre-compilation of the grammar helps quite a bit: the startup time is much shorter, though still long, and i can now see the processing time per instruction. with my grammar separated for precompilation, i decided to try perlcc again on my little bit of user interface and the inclusion of the precompiled grammar module - the result was the same sort of "it failed to compile, but that is not possible!" error message. does anybody know of a documented case where Parse::RecDescent has actually been compiled with perlcc, or am i chasing a willo' the wisp? thanks in advance.