Your insight is truly appreciated. I tried Data::Dumper::Simple and except for pretty printing a hash (name => value where the fat comma "=>" lines up in a vertical column), it does what I was trying to achieve with my 3 subs showvar(),show(),showHASH

Incidently, the author Curtis "Ovid" Poe explains in more detail the reasons why people like myself would want to use his module as a simple debugging aid. ie. typos and "succintness"

Best regards

Bernie in Montreal.