Another good reason to use unlink() is to avoid the chance that somebody will subvert your script by slipping an executable named rm into your path.

You could, of course, mitagate this by writing 

system("/bin/rm", $ERRORFILE) if -e $ERRORFILE;
Notice also that I reworked your use of system() to pass two arguments rather than one. This avoids the often unavoidable, albeit small, overhead of having system() check for shell metacharacters.

Better, I think, to write 

unlink($ERRORFILE) or die "$ERRORFILE: $!"
    if -e $ERRORFILE;

In reply to Re: (Ovid) Re: Evolution of a Perl Programmer (new backup script) by dws
in thread Evolution of a Perl Programmer (new backup script) by reyjrar

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