Thanks for the all the help. Very interesting discussion. It actually helped me solidify my decission to use OOP to solve this problem.
Even though perl is not particularly suited for OOP I think it may help me establish a better program structure, as compared to just using subs, modules, and vars without OOP. OOP implements all these programming techniques, but allows for a more rigid framework for me to work in i.e. ideas like the scope of a variable seem to be inherent to the object/class, instead of trying to think about it too much without OOP. Thanks again. Vince