Thanks Pete, that was a fun little project. I was happy to help since no one else on IRC seemed to notice your question and it interested me. It was a great experience for my first time on IRC. (I'd ignored IRC for longer than I ignored Perl 1..4. I'm not sure I have time to be a regular everywhere, but it was fun, so I'll be back.)

My notes on how we fixed this program, and how it connects to other things, are on my journal http://use.perl.org/~n1vux/journal/28505.

In order to link a comment on your posting to my journal entry, I decided it was time to do a properly signed Monk posting -- so I had to re-create my twice-zombied ID and actually log in, so my first IRC session begats my first monkish scriptorium.

The whole Perl Monks theme amuses me in a nostalgic sort of way, since in the seventies, my main D&D characters ran a religious order for fun and profit.

So thanks for the opportunity!