The problem was it compiled and ran, but never exited and never did what it was supposed to do. There was no error messages to report and nothing to hint at where it went wrong.

I'm as new to this community as I am to coding Perl (zero skill in other words :X) so I apologize if I break any rules, customs or ethics that I am unaware of. I'm grateful for the help given and hope you'll be patient with me if I move to slow.