Appreciate the responses... for the record, I am what I once heard described as a 'perl Puritan' and have '-w' and 'use strict' in every script I write. There's some handy reasons for using import_names, mostly because it makes it much easier to handle param() values in here_docs.

The reason this is important to me is that I have a function generating a form... and so as to not get a ton of 'uninit'd value' warnings, at the top of this function I have a %values hash that does this:

%values = (
\t input_value => $ref->{ input_value } || $PARAM::input_value || ''
\t );
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... and then the input element uses $values{ input_value } where appropriate. This lets you pass in a reference to a DBI statement fetchrow_hashref and covers your bases should there be some mixup. My question arose when I do any type of form verification and return the user to the form... under certain circumstances, I don't want %values to hold the param() info.

In any case, I appreciate the input... take care, folks.
markguy