Re: Seeking guidance for more idiomatic way of (re)writing this script.

[Anonymous Monk]

in reply to Seeking guidance for more idiomatic way of (re)writing this script.

if (open ...) {
  print error
} else {
  real code here
}
#EOF

is better written as

if (open ...) {
  print error
  exit(1);
}

real code here

Besides that, you might want to try splitting the script's processing stages into well-named subroutines. It will help you reduce the amount of variables in the current scope, too. And perhaps rid of the temporary file -- I'm sure MIME::Lite can attach a "file" from a string variable.

[Anonymous Monk]

use autodie 'open';
open ...; # autodie prints error message/exits on failure -- it dies
...