note bluto <i>I guess the question you should be asking, why is unsafe data getting passed to subroutines/methods in the first place.</i><p> Perhaps from the programmer mistyping the argument list or misunderstanding the interface?<p>Validating data from external sources is always needed. Validating data from internal sources is very useful during development and testing (ala C's assert()) and sometimes during production. Params::Validate has helped save me from my own bad memory/typing a number of times. It's not too hard to set it up so you can remove it from production code easily if that's what you want. 602898 602910