I won`t say much, other than it`s solved, and it turned out that the frontier script for MacPerl.doScript() was wrong. To quote my last message: *******> 'ENVT', string (environment)************** WRONG String as a parameter to the apple-event is patently wrong. I can't imagine that I've changed the auto-generated script at that particular point, but there it was. I found the documentation at last. Not in the pod, but -- where else :-x in "MacPerl Ä:MacPerl.Frontend". It says right there it's supposed to be a list. I even tried that at one point, and never figured out why I got a single env-var by name of '{"A","B"}' with no value ... :-) . Anyways, if anyone has the same problem, the coercion in the parameters to the apple-event is supposed to be: ******** 'ENVT', list (environment) *********** ^^ Sorry for the waste of bandwidth, but I hope you appreciate the agony I went through solving this mystery. ;-)