Okay, I can live with PerlTidy wanting to dictate line length, but what fresh hell prevents it from aligning that string on the new line with... at the very least, the innermost enclosing for loop? Ideally, it would be aligned with the or die on the previous line

The default maximum line length Perltidy uses is 80 columns ( though not cast in stone ), as stated in the Perltidy documentation.
However, you can change that like so:
perltidy -l=85 perlscript.pl Please, note the -l=85.
Given, the OP preferred format, the CLI command work for me to produce the format you want: 

perltidy -b -i=3 -l=90 perlscript.pl

[download]
Please, see EXAMPLES under Perltidy documentation.

Note, I will advice you don't go beyond between 72 to 82 columns line length except you know what you are doing (ofcourse you do).
Another option is that, you can reformat manually after using Perltidy or what about that?

If you tell me, I'll forget.
If you show me, I'll remember.
if you involve me, I'll understand.
--- Author unknown to me

In reply to Re: need help divining PerlTidy option by 2teez
in thread need help divining PerlTidy option by temporal

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.