> 
>  I haven't looked into this at all, and the test case I am providing is
>  very bad, in the sense that I have not tried to trim it down.  I wrote
>  the attached code around ten years ago, and was surprised to discover
>  that it no longer works.
> 
>  This may be a documented changed; I don't know.  As I said, I have not
>  investigated this.
> 
>  The output from the enclosed "demo.pl" file should be:
> 
>          IX + IX = 18
>          XI * IV = 44
>          II ** X = 1024
>          M - I = 999
>          Powers of II:
>                  1
>                  2
>                  4
>                  8
>                  16
>                  32
>                  64
>                  128
> 
>  With 5.6.0, that is indeed the output.  With 5.8.0, the output is
>  erroneous:
> 
>          IX + IX = 0
>          XI * IV = 0
>          II ** X = 1
>          M - I = 0
>          Powers of II:
> 


FWIW, if I replace the CPAN Roman package with your code, it works  
just fine on 5.8.8. Alternatively, if I rename Roman to "Romana" or  
some other not-clobbering package, it works just fine.

If I leave it as written and let it use the CPAN version of Roman.pm,  
it fails as you describe.

-jesse