Well the moral of the story is: DON'T INSTALL DEC PATCH KITS!!!!
I decided to bite the bullet and yank out the Jan '98 patch, and suddenly,
magically the perl kit built just fine.  A couple of other problems I'd been
having also evaporated.
Perl v5.004_04 will build straight out of the can - if it doesn't then your
system has been hosed too!
Last year a colleague went off the deep end when he applied one of the
patches out at the time and just about every piece of non-DEC software
stopped working.  I dismissed him as over-reacting at the time.  I am
starting to subscribe to his point of view.  DEC are the only people who
release half-assed patches like this that appear to break as many things as
they fix.  I am re-adopting my policy to never touch any DEC patches again.
I will peform the OS upgrade at the appropriate time - I've never had a
problem with those - but the team at DEC responsible for putting their
patches together... Man, you guys need to find a new career.
-- 
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Paul A. Scowen                       | Internet: scowen_at_tycho.la.asu.edu
Dept of Physics & Astronomy          |           paul.scowen_at_asu.edu
Arizona State University             | World Wide Web:
Box 871504, Tempe, AZ 85287-1504     |    http://tycho.la.asu.edu/scowen.html
Tel/FAX: (602) 965-0938 / 7954       |    http://tycho.la.asu.edu/sah.html
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Received on Wed Mar 11 1998 - 20:24:04 NZDT