"I'm a member of the over documentation school, primarily because I have a memory like a steel sieve. If I'm not sure I'll remember why I chose a certain strategy in a week, a month, or a year, I write it down. If it's gonna confuse me, it will likely confuse the person that replaces me"

This rings especially true for me, as I have about a month's worth of programming experience. I am quite certain that I could've done things like use fewer variables and used $key for every single hash key, etc. I chose to use contextual variable names so, I, the inexperienced author, could go back, read, and understand what I have written! For example, $private_file(@private_list) and $public_file(@public_list). Maybe I've gone a little overboard, but my assumption was that someone with little experience could very well end up with this code in their lap. Thanks everyone your perspectives.