Just a quick comment.

Whenever I'm using "if" loops, I always make sure to place an "else" as it helps with tracing. Especially in a situation like this, you would at least know that there wasn't a match:

if ($omething) {
   # do stuff
} else {
   print "There was no match!\n"; # or some other error 
}
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You could easily place in a more intuative error message. Even if this is only temporary to help you test the code, it's a worthwhile practice to get into.

--Coplan