So far I think you're right about this consultant. 5 identical functions is bad, not using DBI is very odd. This line: while(1==1) is also odd. Perhaps that's for 'readability'? But $theCmd="del "."\"".$SourcePath."\"   >> ".$LOG_DIR."\\".$F_DUMMY." 2>&1" is not very readable; even if someone insists on using the shell, surely an experienced Perl programmer would've written it more like qq{del "$SourcePath" >> $LOG_DIR\\$F_DUMMY 2>&1} (I only use Perl on Unix, so perhaps this line won't work as such; but my point stands). Watch out for this guy, IMO.