note snoopy How about returning up front? Say for example, if monster.pl contains: <code> #!/usr/bin/perl sub mysub {print "I want to see this\n"}; print "but I don't want to see this\n"; exit; # don't want to exit either </code> Then: <code> #!/usr/bin/perl use warnings; use strict; my $prog_code = do {local $/ = undef; open (my $fh, '<', 'monster.pl') or die "open error: $!"; <$fh>}; eval 'return;'.$prog_code ; die "eval error: $@" if $@; warn "trying mysub"; mysub(); </code> The return gets executed as soon as compilation has finished, avoiding execution of the main body: <code> perl do.pl trying mysub at do.pl line 13. I want to see this Compilation finished at Wed Aug 4 10:08:26 </code> <p> <b>Update:</b> Removed intermediate subroutine and added sample output. 852746 852746