I come from a shell background so I don't agree with your comments on the file tests, although I understand that they can be ambiguous. If there is an aspect to a language that you find difficult, how about commenting the code until you are comfortable with the operations you are performing?

i.e. 

# Get the age of the file
my $age = -M BASE_DIR."/$state/$_";

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Update: Fix the comment...

In reply to Re: Perl::Improved Volume 0, Number 0 by coec
in thread Perl::Improved Volume 0, Number 0 by Wassercrats

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