I was getting a silly warning from WWW::Mechanize about finding <input> tags outside <form> tags (silly because it was wrong; I checked the HTML and all the inputs were inside the form tags, just as they should be). The warning was emanating from the HTML::Form module, which appears from the documentation to have a 'verbose' option, but I couldn't see how Mechanize was passing it, unless it is on by default, though the doc seems to suggest otherwise.

Suffice to say that after great gnashing of teeth / rending of garments, etc. I succeeded in making the warning go away by reinstalling the entire LWP library!

Still, I'm baffled by the things I tried that didn't work, including:

• setting $mech->quiet(1)
• constructing the $mech object with the 'onwarn' param set to 'undef'
• putting the bit of code in my script that parses the HTML into a local 'no warnings' block
• commenting out 'use warnings'
• declaring 'no warnings' globally
• gnashing my teeth
• rending my garments

So, like, what gives?

Because I was under the impression that 'use warnings' was like an on-off switch. If it's on, you'll see warnings; otherwise not. And I liked that, because it meant I could file it under "things about perl I understand" and get back to figuring out the stuff I didn't (i.e. pretty much everything else). Only now I have to pull it out of the "things I understand" category and put it back in the "unfathomable mystery" category with all its friends! My learning curve, which has been like a straight vertical line for the past several weeks, has apparently toppled over backwards.

Can anyone shed a little light? One theory I have is that the message I was seeing wasn't a "warning" exactly; If not, what was it then? And why did reinstalling LWP make it go away? And why was I getting it in the first place when the HTML was OK? (I have perl 5.8.7 on a debian-based platform, in case it matters.)

Thanks all.