Thanks for the feedback. I had kind of figured that

3: if (!-e $file) checked to see if $file did not exist, so I changed it to

if (-e $file){
[download]

So that it would execute and append the /default. It failed miserably :-(

$file does exist and = /home/digizms2/public_html/cgi-bin/linkmanage/templates/

What I need is for the code to check if it exists and if it does, then to make

$thebase = /home/digizms2/public_html/cgi-bin/linkmanage/templates/default

Any tips?