i guess the points needs clarification:

1. You consider yourself one of the most advanced perl programmers at your company.
at the moment, i'm actually the *only* programmer at the company, perl or otherwise. (i admit i still have a bias that says HTML via Dreamweaver isn't programming). it's a small company ... 3 people.

2. You needed to post a question to perlmonks to figure out how to write the code.
i'll give you that one, but the only way i can get another pair of eyes on *anything* at this point is to post. more of a logistics problem than anything else. plus, by posting, i got a better solution than what i was banging my head on ....

although, if i'm banging my head on it, chances are others would too ... but i do hope people can learn from my (publically viewable) mistakes ....