However, even a minimal working example with the requisite multiple modules would take some significant effort to prepare and debug.

That's part of the solution. Probably everybody here has experienced this once - you have a problem, you try to explain it so everybody will understand, and suddenly you come up with the solution yourself. =)

It's called "Explaining it to the teddy bear", after an apocryphal story about a university computer center that required students to explain the problem to a teddy bear before being allowed to talk to a student assistant. According to the story, over 2/3's of the students would sheepishly walk away after explaining the problem to the teddy bear, stopping in the middle, and going "Ohhhh....".

This was a boon for the student assistants whose Quake3 time went significantly up.

Being right, does not endow the right to be rude; politeness costs nothing.
Being unknowing, is not the same as being stupid.
Expressing a contrary opinion, whether to the individual or the group, is more often a sign of deeper thought than of cantankerous belligerence.
Do not mistake your goals as the only goals; your opinion as the only opinion; your confidence as correctness. Saying you know better is not the same as explaining you know better.

There are two kinds of questions asked in SoPW. The first is asked by those desperate only for an answer, due to inexperience, a project deadline, or some other dire need. The second is asked with a longer, more pedagogical view -- not only as a means for solving an immedate problem, but also to elucidate a broader principle or to lay bare an issue with the language. I believe that as we gain more experience in Perl Monks and with Perl itself, we each have a responsibility to take that longer view and to frame our questions for the benefit of the many. I try to do that whenever I can.

However, there are still times when a quick answer to an immediate problem is all we can afford the time to prep for. For me, this was one of those times, and -- Laziness being the virtue that it is -- I make no apologies for the brevity of my question. My objective was to get the best answer for the least effort and save the pedagogy for another day when I could afford the time. Even at that, I made certain to include adequate data for someone familiar with the issue (or, as it turns out, non-issue) to respond. What I lacked in detail, I hope I made up for in clarity, and even that required significantly more than "no effort".