My thanks to revdiablo for his suggestion that I compress the code in the hopes of getting someone to reply. I found it in the process... (/me feels really stupid)

First off, let's review what is "true" in perl.

• 1
• " "
• "this"
• "that"
• "I feel stupid"

And, of course, there are those things that everyone forgets now and then... and then kicks themselves repeatedly when they notice it. For example: [] is true. So is {}. After all, it's holding a non-zero value... my trouble serves me right for that little while loop in the get() function of the YuGiOh::Filter package. Once repaired, everything started working...

Well, thanks to everyone who at least tried to help, may we all walk away with a good lesson.