I tried your program on W2K using ActiveState Perl 5.8.2 build 808.

When I ran it as written the program ran on until W2K killed it. When I took the map command out it worked perfectly. When I tried it with $MAX = 70; it again worked perfectly. But when I put the map line back in the program again ran on until W2K killed it.

When I set $MAX = 200; it ran correctly, including the map line. It still ran fine without the map line. Putting the map line before the for block also ran correctly with 200 set. With $MAX = 100; W2K again stopped the program.

HTH

xenchu