Just a quick glance at this suggests some Cargo Cultish practices, but the most glaring problem is that this script won't pass the strict pragma use strict; because you have the correct variable declarations commented out. Aside from that, try inserting the standard error var in your die statements. The way you have it, all data files must reside in the same directory the script is running. If that's indeed the case and it still won't work after making it strict compliant, try looking at your error logs to see what might be the problem.