Humm... I didn't get part of the code. If you have:

$openbr="<";
$closebr=">";
[download]

and

$wholepage=~s/</$openbr/g;
$wholepage=~s/>/$closebr/g;
[download]

aren't you just saying

$wholepage=~s/</</g;
$wholepage=~s/>/>/g;
[download]

What good does that do?
I may be missing something here.

#!/home/bbq/bin/perl
# Trust no1!