Some scripts that work with perl 5.004_04 (the version included with RHL 5.1) don't work with the version included with RHL 5.2. It appears that the version with 5.2 is buggy in some respects. I've had it running for a few hours, and already found a couple of problems. One I tracked down to the regexp replace $dtstr =~ s#(\A|\n|\Z)# #sog; giving a "Substitution loop" error (and the script dies). This is a valid regexp, so I suspect the maintenance release of perl from RHL 5.2 is buggy. How about sticking to "released" versions of software for RHL releases? I use RHL on several Internet/web/database servers and I depend on it being stable.
The version of Perl that ships with 5.2 is 5.004_04 (check /usr/bin to verify) and using a fresh install of 5.2 I was able to execute the script command that you included without problems in the test lab. Verify the version of Perl that you are running.
Please see my email - this is a bug in the trial release of perl used in building the RHL 5.2 perl RPM. The version of perl you included with RHL 5.2 is a trial maintenance release, not meant for regular widespread distribution. Looking through Bugzilla, I see lots of complaints about this version of perl. You should issue an errata on this, either reccomending people downgrade to a stable version of perl or upgrade to a newer perl (and put a newer version of perl in the updates directory).
This bug has been assigned to a developer for further review.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 90 ***