I don't follow what you've done there...

What are you confused by the "$ " or "cat"? "$ " is like C:\> and cat is like type -- its a shell (cmd.exe) session , you should try it yourself

I don't want to skip the loop, I'd like the step by step debugging process to follow the script like it does when it runs through the whole thing, as would be logical. Is there any way to do this?

Wait a minute, I missed something :) Are you sure the key/value pairs are always the same? Maybe there is whitespace or \r ...

Is %thishash tied?

Which version of komodo are you using? Try http://community.activestate.com/forums/komodo/komodo-support