Note hbm's use of strictures - always use strictures (use strict; use warnings;).

Also notice that hbm used the three parameter version of open and checked the result of the open by using very low precedence or rather than high precedence || which checks to see if the last parameter is true or not (not what you are wanting I suspect).

There are a couple of changes I'd make though. Use local to localize the effect of changing special variables ($/ in this case) and use a lexical file handle:

...
local $/="\n\n";
open my $inFile, "<", $file  or die "Unable to open $file: $!";
while(<$inFile>){
    ...
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