Thanks to KM and lemming for the speedy reply. I didn't realize that I couldn't resubmit the post, or I would have cleaned up the errors I made in testing the code as posted, and I would have rephrased the question: "Why didn't this do what I expect". It will, of course, run when invoked directly.

  The point my two helpers made, is the lesson to take away: that close(FILEHANDLE) and closedir(DIRHANDLE) are not the same thing, FILEHANDLE and DIRHANDLE have separate namespaces (and thou shalt thoroughly test all operations, with warnings)
  Thanks again, brethren.

mkmcconn