I'm not saying it is a perl bug, but I am saying it is not a bug in my code, or an inconsistency in the data. I'm completely satisfied with this explanation (and thank you for egging me on to that point!) since I do not see anything going wrong beyond the fact that @Notes simply remains unchanged at the end of the sort. If you want to explain further about what exactly you mean about the use of Data::Dumper that I haven't done already (that's where the previous dump came from), I'm listening (the bit about getting "a string that is valid Perl code, so you can use Data::Dumper to get a canned version of the data that exhibits this behaviour" is not clear to me). For the curious, here's the package for the object:

package PNSearch;
use strict;
use warnings FATAL => qw(all);

use CGIutil;

our $Log = "PNSearch.log";
$SIG{__WARN__} = \&logwarn;
sub logwarn { CGIutil->logger($Log,shift) }

sub new {    # represents a note
    my $self = {};
    (my $fname, $self->{terms}, my $ln, my $dbh) = (pop,pop,pop,pop);
    my $cur = 0;
    while (<$dbh>) {
        next unless (++$cur == $ln);
        $_ =~ s/^([^>]+?)<\|>(.*?)\((.*?)\)\s*<\|>//;
        if (!defined $1) {
            CGIutil->logger($Log, "No href defined: $fname\n$_\n\n");
            return undef;
        }
        my $href = $1;
        if (!defined $2) { 
            $self->{date} = "&mdash;"; 
            $self->{title} = "[no title]";
        } else { 
            $self->{date} = $2;
            if (!defined $3) { $self->{title} = "[no title]" }
            else { $self->{title} = $3 }; 
        }
        $self->{href} = "<a class=\"ntitle\" href=\"/archives/$fname.h
+tml#$href\">";
        $self->{body} = $_;
        last;
    }
    bless($self);
}

sub hilight {
    (my $self, my $term) = (shift,shift);
    my @left = split /</,$self->{body};
    foreach (@left) {    # @right halves each elem of @left
        my @right = split />/,$_;
        next if ($#right < 1);        # no half = <tag><tag>
        $right[1] =~ s/($term)/<em class="hlite">$1<\/em>/g;
        $_ = join(">",@right);
    }                     
    $self->{body} = join("<",@left);
    $self->{title} =~ s/($term)/<em class="hlite">$1<\/em>/g; 
}

1;
[download]

Here's the actual construction:

my @Notes;        # array of PNSearch objects
foreach my $file (@Files) {
    next unless (-f "$DBDir/$file" && !-z "$DBDir/$file");
    # scan text only database
    # each file represents one .html page, each line represents one wh
+ole note
    unless (open(DB, "<$DBDir/$file")) {
        CGIutil->logger($Log,"!!Could not open $DBDir/$file: $!");
        next;
    }
    my @lines = ();    # array of arrays, 0 = line number 1 = terms fo
+und: qv. checkline() below
    my $ln = 1;
    while (<DB>) {
        my @found = ($ln,checkline($_));
        push @lines, \@found if $found[1];
        $ln++;
    }
    close(DB);

    # pull selected notes from markup database 
    my $cur = 0;    # last line in db
    my $MUH;
    unless (open($MUH, "<$DBDir/markup/$file")) {
        CGIutil->logger($Log,"!!Can't open /markup/$file:  $!");
        next;
    }
    foreach my $l (@lines) {
        my $pns = PNSearch->new($MUH, $l->[0]-$cur, $l->[1], $file);
        push @Notes, $pns if ($pns); 
        $cur = $l->[0];
    }
    close($MUH); 
}

sub checkline {
    my $line = pop;
    my $c = 0;
    foreach (@Terms) {
        $c += 1 if ($line =~ /$Pfix<\|>.*?$_/); # anchor name is befor
+e first <|> (don't search that) 
    }
    # nb: return value is the number of terms found, not the number of
+ individual hits
    # ie, if there is only one search term, this will be 0 or 1
    return $c;
}
[download]

The databases are not relational, they are flat files. Example of the plaintext source:

30 April 2008 (Possession of <|>30 April 2008 (Possession of "extreme 
+pornography") <|>SNIP
29 April 2008 (Labor Department and whistleblower law)<|>29 April 2008
+ (Labor Department and whistleblower law) <|>SNIP
29 April 2008 (Dalit woman refused treatment and dies)<|>29 April 2008
+ (Dalit woman refused treatment and dies) <|>SNIP
29 April 2008 (Veterans and suicide)<|>29 April 2008 (Veterans and sui
+cide) <|>SNIP
28 April 2008 (Cluster bombs in Iraq)<|>28 April 2008 (Cluster bombs i
+n Iraq)<|>SNIP
[download]

The only difference between that one and the "markup" one is the SNIPPED part contains html.

Nb, that all the db files have already been verified line by line to ensure they are structured correctly. And as I've said, the final output demonstrates no mistakes in the data set. I can't force anyone to believe that, of course. Notice I'm using fatal warning and logging inconsistencies (there are none reported at this point, and the db has about 15000 notes in it).

ps. for the astute: yes, those hrefs are not uri_encoded, however, that was not my decision, I'm working to spec.