perl -le 'print ">$basedir . /output/file.txt"'
results . /output/file.txt

##</code><code>##

my $basedir = "results";
my $filename = "$basedir . /output/file.txt";
open (OUTHANDLE, ">$filename") or die "can't open ($filename): $!\n";
can't open (result . /output/file.txt): No such file or directory

##</code><code>##

open (OUTHANDLE, ">$basedir" . "/output/file.txt") or die $!;