To expand a little on something jettero mentioned, make sure you think about the security issues involved. Make sure to run Perl in taint mode, and make sure all of the variables are either completely under your control (i.e. hardcoded into the program or a configuration file) or else fully sanitized. Otherwise, think about what could happen if $category_id_number contained a path with .. elements; a path could be constructed to any file on your filesystem, and if the Web server user had permission to unlink it, that would be that. Also think about using Perl functions when possible, such as unlink instead of rm. They're safer, and will give you better performance, too.