as far as i know, v-strings made a brief entrance in perl 5.6, and broke all kinds of backwards compatibility. just forget vstrings, and simply 
require 5.6;

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Of interest might also be Everything you wanted to know about Module Version Numbers and Checking

In reply to Re: v-string warning in 5.8.0 by Anonymous Monk
in thread v-string warning in 5.8.0 by Ferret

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