I'm rewriting a program that I use occasionally to track UPS shipments and have the status sent to a pager or e-mail address through a program that I use. My previous version used Lynx to fetch the package tracking info and dump the status to a file which was parsed and the pertinent info was sent out. This time, I'm sending out all the data (because of the limitations on hashes and the Business::UPS module. In running my code below on ActiveState Perl on a Win2000 box, I get the following error.

Can't use string "File::CounterFile" as a HASH ref while "strict ref" in use at E:/perl/lib/file/CounterFile.pm line 68.

Code is below

#!/usr/local/bin/perl

use Business::UPS;
use File::CounterFile;

$counter = File::CounterFile->new("./msgid", "00000000");
$id = File::CounterFile->value;
$filename = "pagemsg".$id;
print "Enter in your UPS package tracking number: ";
$track = <STDIN>;
chomp($track);

print "Enter in the receiver ID or e-mail address of the recipient";
$receiverID = <STDIN>;
chomp($receiverID);

print "Enter in the name of the messaging service, phone number (no da
+shes or special characters), or Internet messaging server address (SN
+PP, WCTP, or e-mail server address or IP address)";
$service = <STDIN>;
chomp($service);

%t = UPStrack("$track");
$t{error} and die "ERROR: $t{error}";
open (FILE, $filename);

print FILE "MSG:\n";
print FILE "TO:  $receiverID $service\n";
print FILE "CONTENTS:  This package is $t{'Current Status'}\n"; # 'Del
+ivered' or 
                                                # 'In-transit'
print FILE "Package route\n";
foreach $key (keys %t) {
  print FILE "KEY: $key = $t{$key}\n";


File::CounterFile->lock();
$counter->inc;
File::CounterFIle->unlock();
}
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