I've tried this on two platforms (SCO and RH Linux) with two versions of Perl (5.005_03 and 5.6 respectively) and can't produce the bug; I get the same behavior in either case. I'm using the original code as posted (though I cut everything after the open) and ensured that my parameter matched the regex.

What are your platform's vital statistics, out of curiousity?

I'm curious if varying the regex or doing without it will affect the problem. Have you tried doing the same thing via another means? A split on a literal delimiter or some such?

Update: after a flurry of /msgs we established that the script works correctly from the command line but not when run from VN Server. It does display the correct version of Perl in the latter case. I'm stumped as to what the server could do to induce this error.

..Theo