OK. I understand the permission problem, but unfortunately I'm running this script on a cifs-mounted server share and the client doesn't pick up permissions properly. That is, my machine thinks the file has world read/write even though the server only allows r/w to the owner.
So I guess my question ultimately is can I tell perl to ignore the ownership and just run the damn thing?
Copy it elsewhere, fix the permission bits, run it. Otherwise perl won't let you, and for good. But you should really get that broken client/server setup fixed.