Starved of a good SoPW on a Friday I have come up with

use strict;
use Cwd;
use File::Spec;

my($dir,$dest) = @ARGV;

my $d = defined $dest ? $dest : cwd();
## don't die incase intermediate dirs exist
$d = File::Spec->catdir($d, $_) and not -d $d and mkdir($d)
  for File::Spec->splitdir($dir);
[download]

Of course using the likes of mkpath from File::Path is probably a better idea.
HTH

_________
broquaint