Why do I need so many chdir functions? It seems unable to deal with "\..\index" or any of that sort of stuff.

$x = "\..\index"; actually sets $x to "..index" (with a warning about the "\i" on some perl versions).

Two things to fix: first, try using forward slash or doubling your backslash; second, '\..' is not meaningful, since the root directory should have no parent.