I assume a new install of PERL 5.8.8 would require all our modules to be reinstalled.

Well ... that's definitely not true wrt Mandrake linux, and it's definitely not true wrt Win32. I doubt very much that it's true wrt Solaris 10, but I don't really know. With my Mandrake linux, all I had to do was install perl 5.8.8, and the relevant 5.8.7 directories were automatically added to @INC, thereby alleviating any need to re-install modules. On Win32, however, that didn't happen. But all that was necessary was to copy the entire 5.8.7/site/lib/ directory to 5.8.8/site/lib/. You could do the same thing on Solaris if necessary.

I also wonder if you need to 'use diagnostics;'. I suspect that if the diagnostics module is not loaded, then the problem will go away.

Cheers,
Rob