My opinion on (?{ ... }) was that I needed to know how Perl did it to make sure I'd do it right. I'm glad you answered: it proves I was not the only one wanting it to work the hard way. ;-)

Thanks to Roy Johnson below, I guess I'll blend in a does of simplicity in my code. There's still a bug somewhere, though.

Well, at least I can keep the test suite. *sigh*