My apologies, you're completely right.

I dropped the $caller bit for my testing and then promptly forgot that I had done so and therefore incorrectly concluded that since what I had wasn't strict compliant, what you had couldn't be either.

I considered that $$database_handle could be either a symbolic reference or a scalar reference and that is why I wrote that it too could cause you problems under strict, rather than it does.

I should have checked my assumptions.

All the best,

jarich