Even for a relative perl novice like myself your "critiques" seem a bit dopey so far. It's a bit silly to say the file test codes don't sufficiently "describe" the test -- such descriptions are only important for those who don't know what the codes are and don't want to look them up. And I'm in agreement with the other poster on 0-based indices; I think they're pretty typical. I hope your criticisms will get a little better, you give very little in the way of reasons for why you think something is "dumb" or why something "should" be a certain way.