You added error checks, good. You didn't do it as suggested in perlstyle, your error checks don't include the information in $!.

My advice about unless got ignored. Its value isn't obvious until you've personally been through a couple of debugging sessions. But I highly recommend taking it.

Update: After reading the response, I understand the reasons for omitting $!. The unless issue, I once had the same opinion. People in your audience might well like it. It certainly can make the code scan well, but debugging is a different story.