Yep, moving that block saves an awful lot of time - as I said, with the block moved, you open the records.txt once only - c/w once per file.

As far as the uninit value is concerned, try...

use File::Find;
my $DIR = "/tmp/logs/";

open(RECORDS, "/tmp/logs/records.txt") or die "Could not open records 
+file: $!";
local $/ = undef; # Ignoring binmode as its a text file
my $RE = join '|', <RECORDS>;
close RECORDS;

find(\&queries, $DIR);
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Oops, sorry, my fault - as shown, the $RE lexical variable wasn't defined until after use (by the queries sub).