Short answer: yes!

Do you really need 253 configuration files with predictable name/contents mapping? If these files are required by an external tool to set the IP, then it would be smarter to generate a temporary config file on demand by the Perl program.

Furthermore, some questions to ask (yourself) to improve your specification:

• What platform (Windows, Unix, ..., any)?
• Switch IP at fixed times or after roughly 12 hours (free floating)?
• One or more instances (on several hosts) running?
• Daemon or cronjob-triggered program?
• Is this an XY Problem? E.g., can it be solved by DHCP?
• Security, logging, monitoring, configuration, etc.

Because, it's Sunday, here's a template to fiddle with... ;-)

use strict;
use warnings;

use constant  {
  START_IP_BYTE4 =>   2,
  MAX_IP_BYTE4   => 254,
  SLEEP          =>  12 * 3600
};

my @ip = qw(192 168 10 2);
$ip[3] = shift || START_IP_BYTE4;


while ( 'true' ) {
  set_ip( @ip );
  $ip[3]++;
  $ip[3] = START_IP_BYTE4 if $ip[3] > MAX_IP_BYTE4;

  print "Next change: " . localtime( time() + SLEEP ) . "\n";
  sleep SLEEP; # floating!
}
die "oops! $! / $@";

sub set_ip {
  my @ip = @_;
  my $ip = join( '.', @ip );
  print "Setting local IP to $ip...\n";
  print "Load file 'ip$ip[3].txt' ???\n";
  #TODO: set local IP
}
[download]

CPAN-search-terms-of-interest: cron, daemon, ifconfig, ...

---

---

Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!

Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.

Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.

Please read these before you post! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:

a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr

You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)

	For:		Use:
	&		&
	<		&lt;
	>		&gt;
	[		&#91;
	]		&#93;

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.