in reply to Perl File Editing Subroutines, Any ideas?

You should read the perl.com article FMTYEWTK About Mass Edits In Perl by Geoff Broadwell

Example: Running Multiple Regexes on Multiple Files 

perl -pi.bak -e "s/Bill Gates/Microsoft CEO/g;
     s/CEO/Overlord/g" <FileList>

[download]
--
print map{chr}unpack(q{A3}x24,q{074117115116032097110111116104101114032080101114108032104097099107101114})

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom