I have always found paths and chdir to be somewhat of a pain in Perl. So as he does not seem to be hangin around anymore here is a excellent snippet from Abigail that gives you scoped chdir.

package Chdir;

sub TIESCALAR {my $class = shift; bless \$class => $class}
sub STORE     {${$_ [0]} = $_ [1]; chdir $_ [1]}
sub FETCH     {${$_ [0]}}
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This allows you to have scoped chdir, ie if you do a local $dir= 'newdir' in a block, then the directory changes back to it's initial value at the end of the block:

package main;

use vars qw /$dir/;

tie $dir => 'Chdir';

$dir = '/tmp';

print "Dir = " . `pwd`;

{
    local $dir = '/etc';
    print "Dir = " . `pwd`;
}

print "Dir = " . `pwd`;
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mirod for Abigail