It would seem that many have felt I have done something wrong here?

Not necessarily wrong, just another way to do it ... :-)

There are a couple of points that I would highlight with your code:

• The use of the perlfunc:map command in a void context is generally considered bad form as the strength of this function lies in the list context that it returns. The use of this function in a void context generally means that you are using the wrong function for the task - For example, where you have:

  map { push(@pieces,$_) } split(/\./,$file);
  [download]

  It would be much better to perform this with a simple for or foreach loop. eg.

  push( @pieces, $_ ) foreach split( /\./, $file );
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  This is also referenced in the node - What's wrong with using grep or map in a void context?.

• At the point in the function where you remove the file extension and return the remaining portion of the file name, there are a couple of ways by which this could be done possibly more efficiently (not having performed code benchmarks at this point), the most immediate being the following:

  pop @pieces;
  return join '.', @pieces;
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  In this instance, there is no need for the regular expression against the original file name or test for definition of file name as join will return an empty string if @pieces is empty.

One aspect about your code however that did seem redundant given that the functionality which you are seeking is available within File::Basename (see my node here for a code example that gives you exactly what you desire from the fileparse method).

perl -e 's&&rob@cowsnet.com.au&&&split/[@.]/&&s&.com.&_&&&print'