hidden character?!?  Dunno...  typed the $hvm line agin and it worked...

Earlier was still getting this error:

root@kitt:~/Build-VM# perl test.pl
libvirt error code: 38, message: Cannot recv data: ssh: connect to host 192.198.0.35 port 22: No route to host: Connection reset by peer

also added some formatting and changed the method name to print_vm_list.  WOuld like to left justify but that's really not very important.
howabout them apples.

Apparently, (s)printf takes a "-" for "lenght" which indicates padding on the opposite (trailing) end.
bin/vm-gen.pl works now too...