The display from perl -d is showing what i guess are ANSI display
control sequences in an Windows XP Command Prompt window.
E.g. the command line
perl -d -e 42
gives
main::(-e:1): 42
?[4;m DB<1> ?[1mq
?[0m

<I've snipped the banner lines>

This is using perl, v5.8.0 built for MSWin32-x86-multi-thread
(ActiveState build 806)

Can the ANSI output be turned off, or alternatively XP be told to
handle the ANSI correctly?

thanks
Alan