The second goal (easy to understand) is achieved by providing a non-cached, variable based interface providing the variables $RUID, $EUID and $SUID, for real, effective, and saved UIDs respectively.

And from perldoc perlvar:

$EFFECTIVE_USER_ID
$EUID
$>      The effective uid of this process.

$EFFECTIVE_GROUP_ID
$EGID
$)      The effective gid of this process.
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Doesn't that mean that if I use English and use Proc::UID qw(:vars) then there might be issues as to which $E[UG]ID I'm using? (Although you could argue that I'd get what I deserved).

How much would it matter? How do I ensure that these two modules work together nicely without having to rely on the order in which they're loaded? Is that the only way?

You've mentioned that Perl may cache the values for $<, $>, $( and $) in some cases, do you care to go into that a little more?

Looking good (typos in documentation provided separately)

jarich