I was discussing something similar to this with a woman friend of mine. She complained how a man will often say " there is nothing wrong with this ( piece of machinery, or whatever ), I'll be back tommorrow. The man, will then go into this state of mind where he thinks his "luck, karma, or magic" will somehow alter physical reality, and make the thing work the next day.

I have often experienced this sort of magic, but it usually takes something extra....like sending out good thoughts, good preventative maintenance, or prayers to the gods. ( no chicken sacrifices here :-) ).

Anyways, Perl and the way computers run, are very machine-like; and it is very unlikely there is any magic in the way things run , or don't run. It is more like some sort of hardware issue.....like overheating slowing things down, and it runs better the next morning when its cool. Or, you were erroneously running an older buggy version of the script due to some other software error.( maybe thru an IDE? , always use Midnight Commander :-) )

However, if you can scientifically reproduce your "psychic debugging technique", where you can fix code by dreaming on it.....you will be in great demand!!

Of course, dreaming of a bug-fix, then implementing the next day by changing the code, is real..... I do it all the time....... and I wonder who it is in "dream-space" that is acting as my muse. :-)

Of course, the "event-stream" of real life is pure magic, so you may very well be experiencing something out of the ordinary...... but you will have a hard time proving it......its done that way to protect the innocent......