thanks for the insight, all.. ++'s all around. Valuable lessones when learning perl: hashes can be used for "darn near everything". I hadn't even thought of using hashes for the project, but it's obviously the superior approach.
's $query->Vars() method. Didn't know about that, and ended up going from CGI.pm 2.46 to 2.76 anyway. I guess that needed an update anyhoo.