Thanks, moritz. I will do my best. Having never had this challenge before, I think I was just too shell-shocked to realize what was going on. I have spent the last several days 'recovering' and now have largely succeeded...and I have to say that I do very much like Perl 5.12! I still get a few modulesm that are a bit persnickety...not sure why. But chromatic's response below yours is the real root of the problem, I believe, and I am busy trying to shore up my blunder. Thanks to eveyone's great responses. PerlMonks are the greatest!