>In other words, you may want to change your handler definitions to something like: $SIG{'INT'}  = \&sigint_catcher;

Bingo - that was the ticket; thanks man!

( I've obviously got some re-conditioning ahead, in order to get my perl groove back on! heheh )

As far as the OOP'ification goes -- I'll tweak around a little more so that I have some code that will show what I'm trying to get at; in order to help clarify my goals with this.

Beers!