hi daveg,

first, even though i'm a web developer, i actually know very little, but let me see if i can help anyways.

you probably already know that 500 is a server error. so, i went looking for websites that dealt with perl and errors and here is one that i've found:

http://www.perl.com/pub/a/doc/FAQs/c...l-cgi-faq.html

About half way down is this question and answer:

<font color=blue>Q3.4: Why am I getting the "Server: Error 500" message?

You can get a server error for the following reasons:

If the script does not contain the "#!/usr/local/bin/perl" header line that points to the Perl interpreter, or if the path to the interpreter (and/or a library file) is invalid.

If the first line output from the script is not a valid HTTP header (i.e "Content-type: text/html"), or if there is NO blank line after the header data.

If there is a syntax error in your script. Always run it from the command-line first. </font color=blue>

i'm going to keep searching....

good luck!

splash