No problem with harsh. There was lots of good info for me in your reply. This is the kind of stuff I was looking for with my question.
As a side note to anyone doing a search... dumpvar.pl is a part of the perl distribution. I've always found it anywhere I went. I'll give Data::Dumper a try and catch up with the rest of the world ;-)
Thanks to all for the time and thought put into your replies!