Hello all, I'm new to perl and currenlty having an issue with a little script. I'm trying to match a variable against another variable read in from a line in a text file and replace based upon a positive match. However, I can never get the match sequence to work correclty.

#!/usr/bin/perl

print "Directory path? ";
chop ($_dirpath = <STDIN>);

print "File extension? ";
chop ($_filext = <STDIN>);

print "Replace: ";
chop ($_match = <STDIN>);

print "By: ";
chop ($_newline = <STDIN>);


opendir (DH,$_dirpath) or die "Can't access directory\n";
while ($olditem = $item = readdir DH) 
    {
       if ($item !~ /\.$_filext$/) 
           {
               print "Skipping $item\n";
               next;
                    }
        $olditem =~ s/\.$_filext$/.bak/;
        rename "$_dirpath/$item","$_dirpath/$olditem";
        open (workinfile,"$_dirpath/$olditem")or die "Can't read Work 
+File\n";
        open (newfile, ">$_dirpath/$item")or die "Can't read new File\
+n";
        while ($_linein = <workinfile>) 
           {
           if ($_linein eq $_match)
                            {
               printf newfile $_linein, "\n" or die "Can't write File\
+n";
               printf newfile $_newline, "\n" or die "Can't write File
+\n";
                            }
           else
               {
                printf newfile $_linein, "\n" or die "Can't write File
+\n";
                }
                next;
           }
        close (workinfile);
        close (newfile);
    }
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Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!!!!!! Thanks In Advance! -Steve