in reply to script suicide?

The script has loops, so dumping out checkpoints to see where it is snagging up is a real hassle ... it generates a lot of output with the loops

So write a script to analyze the log. Looking in logfiles for evidence of accidental loops isn't rocket science. If you follow a bit of discipline in how you format your log entries, parsing them should be straightforward.

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom