Thanks Ovid, et al! Totally my bad (thanks for not -- me too badly—oh, the joys of programming). $branch was the culprit and had nothing to do with $ENV{'PATH'} or $newfile. But did take the advice of diotalevi and captured potential errors ($branch is set by me so not a hazard). Revised code: 
$branch =~ /^([\w-]+)$/i;
$branch = $1;

if ($sourcefile =~ /([\w .-]+)$/i) {;     #strip off path stuff
   $newfile = $1;
} else {
   return("Bad file name");
}

open (OUTFILE, ">../$branch/images/$newfile") or die "Cannot open $new
+file: $!";
...

[download]

—Brad
"Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up. " G. K. Chesterton

In reply to Re^2: Insecure dependency error and $ENV{'PATH'} by bradcathey
in thread Insecure dependency error and $ENV{'PATH'} by bradcathey

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