umask may be the source of your pain.

The default permissions of a newly created file are set by umask. If your user process has a different umask than your script process, you may have troubles.

I wish I could provide a good summery of how umask interacts with parent directory permissions and the many places it can be set, but I don't think I could do a shorter or more accurate job than the man pages or a more knowledgeable monk.

I reached my current incomplete understanding of umask through the following commands.

man umask 
grep -d recurse -i umask /etc | more
more <files that seem relevant> 
man <files that seem relevant>

[download]
...and searched my ftp server's docs to realize that umask needed to be set in my ftp server's config file.

Your problem is obviously not ftp related so perhaps:
 perldoc -f umask might help. You might also toss a debugging  system('ls -l'); into your script just after you create your $new file.

Hope this helps (or is at least relevant...)



--mandog

In reply to Re: can't get chmod to work by mandog
in thread can't get chmod to work by George_Sherston

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