in reply to Re^3: Net::SMTP undef weirdness
in thread Net::SMTP undef weirdness

OK, I take that back. Sorry - your reply seemed narky.

Its all good :) all self-evident truths seem snarky when stated -- I should have been more explicit/specific about which call failed

The Basic debugging checklist says 7. Check the return (error) status of your commands , the same goes for methods, including constructors :)

Though in all honesty, I was feeling snarky that day :)