Is there something that I'm missing?

Looking at your code I'm somewhat perplexed by what you are trying to do since I don't know what's in what variable.

If $record[0] is supposed to be a file name you might want to consider trying something like:

use FileHandle;
:
: hand waving like crazy here..
$fh{record[0]}=new FileHandle $record[0],"r" or die $!;
:
:
[download]

or some such.