Re: your points...

1. It's pointed out elsewhere but I'm only doing 2 wgets, not 5000
3&5. I thought about combining these when I was writing the original script but to do that, I'd have to fire off smbclient several thousand times. Given my past experience with Windows networking, this struck me as something to be avoided at all costs. :)
4. I don't doubt this at all. This is a ver 1.0 script so I haven't done anything about tightening up the code yet. I've been concentrating on getting it fully functional and running without any problems.

It was 3 (and to a lesser extent, 4) that prompted my question about porting to Perl. After reading everyone's responses, I think I'll go ahead and port it over. Worst case is I learn some new stuff. Best case is the process runs a whole lot faster.

Thanks for your comments,

Jack