You have provided an excellent "walk through" of the TIMTOWTDI choices, and why the Llama's suggested script is superior.I'm very grateful for your help!

Since you mentioned the IO::Prompt module, I downloaded it to try. The script you provided:

use IO::Prompt;
while (my $word=prompt 'Please enter a word: ', -while => qr/\S/) {
    print "You entered '$word'\n";
}
[download]

...gives me the following error:

Use of uninitialized value in pattern match (m//) at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/IO/Prompt.pm line 91.

What should I make of that?