As an explanation for the working code already published elsewhere in this thread, perhaps what's missing in your code is that you had presumed that:

   <DIFF>;
[download]

automatically assigns to $_. No such thing.

I'm curious about what you read or how you figured that false fact out, because it's not said in any official documentation (in fact, the official documentation specifically contradicts it in a few places). And yet I've seen more than one person make that false attempt.

If you read it somewhere, can you post that reference so we can track down the bad meme?

Thanks!

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker