Ah, I seem to have hit a snag.
Whay shouldnt i use back slashes with biolinux or linux box. Are they supposed to be forward slashes or something else (dumb question i know)?.
On all unix and linux systems, path names use forward slashes. Backslashes are for escaping characters on the command line (just like in perl).
Update: if you really are that clueless about OS differences, you need File::Spec -- read the man page for that module, and start making a habit of using it. It's part of the perl core (a "built-in" module that is present whenever/wherever perl is installed), and it'll be your constant friend.