note merlyn I don't use the debugger to "debug" my code either: I come from the old school, where you just add <tt>print</tt> until it works. {grin} And since that's pretty painful, I usually just do incremental development, adding one little piece at a time, and running the code each time, so that I can tell where it broke when I broke something. <p> I <i>do</i> use the debugger frequently as an interactive Perl: <code> $ perl -deal </code> because the ability to type <tt>x arbitrary expression</tt> is pretty cool for testing out snippets. <p>-- <a href="http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/">Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker</a></p> 30091 30091