Lets see where to start. 1. first you are creating a "big ass array". you throw away th edata. No reason to do that. 2. You are opening/closing the file over and over again. You can write more than 8 bits to a file at once. Why not do something simple like...

open( ... )
for( 1 .. $choice )
{
  print LOG "x";
}
close( ... )
[download]

3rdly, why divide choice by itself to get 1? What if the user types in 0? you dont' exit gracefully, but kill your own program.