If this is a windows share, then you are refrencing it wrong. I had the same problem when I tried to access a file on my local network. Here is a simple sample that I wrote and tested on my local Windows network.

Oh, and about the shebang line. Some people leave it for windows scripts for a few reasons. Portability of course. And even with strictly windows code, I leave because it tells my editor that the document is perl code to do syntax hilighting corectly!!

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;


my $share_path = '\\\\Zoe\\zoe_data\\';
my $test_file = 'test.txt';

open (INP, $share_path . $test_file) or 
    die "Can't open file [$share_path . $test_file]: $!\n";


while (<INP>){
    print;
}
close (INP);
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