I don't see any subdirectory building anywhere. When you ask for the directories under "/home", you're getting back "merlyn" and "vroom", not "/home/merlyn" and "/home/vroom". So you then recurse on just "merlyn", and the opendir fails.

To do that portably, you need to look at File::Spec, since Unix wants forward slash, Windows can handle forward slash but most people expect backslash, Macs want colon, and VMS wants some mixed up mess.

But then you also have to figure out how to skip over symlinks, since that can send you into an infinite loop by turning a DAG into a general node map, bringing you back to where you started too fast.

You also didn't localize your directory handle. In the way you used it, it wouldn't have hurt you, but it it could have potentially stomped on any other use of the same name.

So this is why "recursive directory handling" is nearly always responded with a groan, a sigh, and "please use File::Find". It's an easy task to consider, but a difficult task to actually do right.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker