Everyone, I'm still totally baffled, but I think I figured something out. It must have something to do with ownership or permissions.

Up to this point, I have been editing the Perl scripts directly from the server using Samba. In other words, the server I'm running the scripts on is sitting in one room and I'm in another room editing the scripts from my Windows box.

Well, just to test some of your suggestions today and gather information for a reply, I logged into the server using FTP. I downloaded the scripts, removed the -w switch, uploaded it again, and now everything works fine!

If anyone can shed some light on WHY this happened, I'd be forever in your debt.

Believe me, I'm not crazy. I was fiddling with this for hours last night trying to figure out why this was happening. I'm still stumped, but at least I've got a clue now.