subroutines should take arguments, not work on global vars, this (scoping) is very important concept to learn

initialize( "ro/sham/bo");
sub initialize {
    my( $ARCHIVE ) = @_;
    make_path( $ARCHIVE );
}
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Also read Tutorials: Variable Scoping in Perl: the basics,
Coping with Scoping , Mini-Tutorial: Perl's Memory Management,
Lexical scoping like a fox,