Hi Mayhem50

Perl treats $INPUT{$field} as a hash variable. without using stricts it works because it will lexically create a variable called %INPUT inside the sub. So it would work well without using strict. When you use strict , we need to explicitly declare the variable.So be sure what data type you would want to use. if you need a scalar $INPUT then remove $INPUT{$field}=$Value; as this is not the right way to store a value in scalar. Else if you want to store a vector ie hash then declare your variable as my %INPUT=(); and also remove the return $INPUT statement.

NOTE: FYI %INPUT and $INPUT are two different varibales and can coexist. so you can declare  my ($INPUT,%INPUT);