I just wanted to make a global debug function and incorporate as much possible as I'm writing a lexer/parser and I prefer to generate my own debugging information built into the code. I'm not sure why this was so hard to find but I'm guessing way more people care about knowing where they are in a file they are reading, then in their own code in the context of PERL. I think the __LINE__ should suffice....and I haven't checked into CARP yet but I do vaguely recall stact traces somehow being involved with that.