See perlop.

A great way to find out why Perl does not "seem to run" your code is to look at the error messages that Perl produces. They are output not by Perl to spite you, but for your information and usually contain enough information to find the corresponding cause. For example, they usually contain a line number.

If you feel overwhelmed by the error message that Perl gives you, instead of trying to understand and resolve the error yourself, you could tell others the error message you get and ask them for advice. Maybe now is the right time to try that approach?

The problem was it compiled and ran, but never exited and never did what it was supposed to do. There was no error messages to report and nothing to hint at where it went wrong.

I'm as new to this community as I am to coding Perl (zero skill in other words :X) so I apologize if I break any rules, customs or ethics that I am unaware of. I'm grateful for the help given and hope you'll be patient with me if I move to slow.