I remember that article, and make can be used for dependancy resolution outside of compiling...true....however this cries out for regular script use, IMHO. I am in agreement with you that "things that make me think are good" of course -- this is why I'm here as well. If it was just Q&A it would be a boring place.

This is getting me on a usability aspect. This scripts seems to act so very unlike every single Unix utility out there, and if written another way, users would never have to deal with the readme at all. This includes help if the arguments are wrong, using things like GetOpt::Long or GetOpt::Std, etc. Thus it becomes (to the user) "that Perl abomination" rather than a cool use of perl. Keep it simple by following convention, and let folks learn it is Perl after the fact.

My favorite comment from frozen-bubble: "Yes, it's written in Perl, you non-believers..."

That's my perl design philosophy.