hola; grepped through *.pl for 'Data::Dumper', sure enough;

"# use Data::Dumper; no! memory problems with large structs"
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typically experienced on my well-endowed PC.

i remember it all now. my keenness to use serialization; falling for data::dumper; sleepless nights, the brief, intense romance; the awful realization - in the long term, my relation with freeze thaw was going to be a limited one, that i had better try Freeze::Thaw, or even Storable.

in the end i turned to files, sockets, parsing; ashes to ashes, dumper to dust...

rgds, w.