copy ("$html_dir/$figfile", "$html_dir/$figfile.tmp") or die "Can not make temporary copy of file: $1"; Isn't going to give you a meaningful error message, since as we pointed out earlier $1 is undef.

IOW, your die message is going to look like: Can not make temporary copy of file: And you won't know which file the script died on.

Try: copy ("$html_dir/$figfile", "$html_dir/$figfile.tmp") or die "Can not make temporary copy of file: $html_dir/$figfile\n";

Using perl 5.8.1-RC3 unless otherwise noted.
Apache/1.3.33 (Darwin) unless otherwise noted.
Mac OS X 10.3.9 unless otherwise noted.
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