The program I am running is large and I have not been able to reproduce the problem in a small example. You're right, I forgot to mention that the value returned by time() in the program code is not the value returned by my function, but calling time() in the debugger does return the value from my function. Witness: 
500: my $time = time();
  DB<4> n
Queue::MySQLQ::dequeue(/Users/foo/lib/Queue/MySQLQ.pm:501):
501: my $expire_time = $time + $WORKER_HEARTBEAT_FAILURE;
  DB<4> x $time
0  1238124047
  DB<5> x time()
0  1238124062
  DB<6> sleep 2

  DB<7> x time()
0  1238124062

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What situation could cause time() in the program code to run different code than time() called in the debugger?

Thanks for all the help.

In reply to Re^4: Where does time come from? CORE::GLOBAL:time no honored. by Anonymous Monk
in thread Where does time come from? CORE::GLOBAL:time no honored. by Anonymous Monk

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