There are not many that I can help because of my relative new-ness to perl! But you seem willing to put forth the effort, and I can answer some of your questions. Well, I would like to suggest you pick up a copy of Learning Perl 3rd Ed Written by our very own Merlyn. Trust me, you will learn a lot from it.

In the line foreach (glob shift) Perl is using @_ as it's default.

LR

Whip me, Beat me, Make me use Y-ModemG.