I'm kind of surprised it didn't occur to you to read the documentation for the chmod function. It would have answered both your questions.

1. You can supply any number of files in the list, not just one.
2. The mode number is not assumed by perl to be octal. If you want to represent the value in octal, you have to write it properly. That means giving a leading zero.

       chmod 0655, $file1, $file2, @other_files, get_more_files();
   [download]

jdporter
The 6th Rule of Perl Club is -- There is no Rule #6.