in reply to Debugging?

You say "my interpreter won't stay open long enough to tell me; it closes right when the program finishes"

I guess you are running the program by double clicking the .pl file. Try opening a command (cmd) window and running the program there.

See also perldoc perldebug

--

Oh Lord, won’t you burn me a Knoppix CD ?
My friends all rate Windows, I must disagree.
Your powers of persuasion will set them all free,
So oh Lord, won’t you burn me a Knoppix CD ?
(Missquoting Janis Joplin)

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom