You need to enclose $dir/$new_date in quotes. Otherwise, Perl assumes that you are trying to perform division with two scalars. 
opendir (DIR, "$dir/$date_cfg") or die "Can't read from $dir/date_cfg:
+ $!\n";

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In fact, ordinarily you would have spotted this problem right away. Perl will generate an error similar to the following: 
Argument "new_date" isn't numeric for division at somescript.cgi line 
+15.
Illegal division by zero at somescript.cgi line 15.

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The "isn't numeric" warning occurs if you use the -w switch, but does not stop the program. However, since Perl will do string/numeric conversions on the fly, it will usually result in a division by zero error, which does kill the program. Only because you are using numeric data in your second argument are you not getting an error.

Cheers,
Ovid

In reply to (Ovid) Re: Search for file using element of path as file name by Ovid
in thread Search for file using element of path as file name by Limo

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