note jarich Perl is case sensitive. Thus writing: <code> perl -Wc mycode.pl </code> is not the same as writing: <code> perl -wc mycode.pl </code> The latter (with the small <code>w</code>) says turn on warnings for your code. The former says turn on warnings even if parts of the code use <code>no warnings</code> or some other construct to turn off warnings. Chances are that you don't really want to be using <code>-W</code> almost ever when compiling your code. But you do want to use <code>-w</code>. An important thing to know is that that error message has nothing to do with your code. Your current document isn't being replaced. What is happening is the following: <ol> <li>perl parses your code for <code>use</code> lines and similar directives. </li> <li>perl then finds the code for the module you're using (ie Smart::Comments) then parses and compiles that code. If that code generates any warnings or compilation errors perl tells you about them. </li> <li>After all of your modules are compiled and loaded perl compiles the rest of your program. If there are any warnings or compilation errors you'll hear about them now. </li> <li>perl then executes your code. </li> </ol> The error you're seeing is being generated in step 2. Something in Smart::Comments' dependancies results in UNIVERSAL::VERSION being defined more than once. This may or may not be a bug. If it's done inside an area which explicitly turns warnings off then generally you won't see this warning. Unless you use <code>-W</code> rather than <code>-w</code>. Basic summary: do your compile checks with <code>-wc</code> rather than <code>-Wc</code> (this isn't C), because generally module authors usually turn off warnings only when they really mean it. Hope this helps jarich 512005 512005