Maybe wiser heads than mine have posted here, but if you're dying to use flags, you could use constants. So here's an answer to your third question.

use constant PRINTFLAG => 0;
use constant SAVEFLAG => 1;
use constant MAILFLAG => 2;
[download]

And then keep track of it with a status/state variable. That at least makes the code easier to read: $state = PRINTFLAG;, instead of just a number. Of course, it's really only approporiate where multiple states come into question.

--
Allolex