I've tried -w flags and use strict and %in does exist.
I turned the buffer off re your suggestion and nothing seemed to change..could be my own ignorance..
i'm not really familiar with the cgi module, but i was writing this myself so that it could be small portable and reusable for all my scripts cleaning up all the junky table code i've been writing..i'll look at the CGI mod again..but i'm resistant to change! :)