It's all a matter of order and where to BEGIN: ;-)

use strict;
my $VERSION;
my $MAXCHILDREN;
use Getopt::Long qw(:config pass_through );

BEGIN {
  ($VERSION  = '$Revision: 1.23 $') =~ s/\$(.+) \$/$1/;
  $MAXCHILDREN = 10;
  my %options = ( 'version'    => \$version,
                          'children=i' => \$MAXCHILDREN,
                          'input'      => \$inputFile,
                          'socket'     => \$path,
                          'dump'       => \$dump,
                          'run'        => \$run,
                        );

  GetOptions(%options);

  if (${$options{dump}}) {
     print $VERSION,"\n";
     print "There are $MAXCHILDREN child processes by default\n";
     print "Input file is ",${$options{input}},":\n";
     print "Comm socket is ",${$options{socket}},":\n";
     exit if ! ${$options{run}};
  }
  
  if (${$options{version}}) {
     print $VERSION,"\n";
     exit if ! ${$options{run}};
  }
}

use IO::Select;
use IO::Socket;
use Fcntl;
use POSIX qw(:signal_h WNOHANG);
use Net::SNMP;
use DBI;
use Sys::Hostname;

$|++;
umask(0177);

my $inputFile         =  "./mping.lookup";
my $path              =  "./unix_socket";
my $OID               =  '.1.3.6.1.4.1.15102.2.1.1.1';
my $interval          =  60;
my %source;
my %failures;
my $dump              = 0;
my $run               = 0;
my $version           = 0;

$SIG{TERM} = $SIG{INT}  = sub { unlink $path; exit 0 };
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This is untested. But the basic idea is that the code you need to execute so you can show the Version info, is moved to a BEGIN {} block, before you load any of the other modules you need.

Liz