Thank you for the suggestion. I had not included the  $! at the end of my  die message.

The two error codes that I receive when it fails are "file exists", which tells me that it will not try to go any further because it found the directory.

The other message is just the opposite. "No such file or directory at file.pl line 2."

if !($dir){
mkdir $dir,777 or die "Cant mkdir: $!";
}
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Does not explain the second message which occurs only when I use a scalar.