Maybe your scripts (firstscript and secondscript) have <CR><LF> line terminations instead of the usual (on unix) <LF> line termination. That might explain the first of your error messages. The second error message, beginning without an opening single quote and with the text ".links" is a bit more puzzling.

One way to see what your line terminations are is to use the "od" command. For example, in the following, each line ends with "\r\n".

$ od -c test.html
0000000   <   h   t   m   l   >  \r  \n   <   h   e   a   d   >  \r  \
+n
0000020   <   t   i   t   l   e   >   t   e   s   t   <   /   t   i   
+t
0000040   l   e   >  \r  \n   <   /   h   e   a   d   >  \r  \n   <   
+b
0000060   o   d   y   >  \r  \n   T   h   i   s       i   s       s   
+o
0000100   m   e       "   t   e   x   t   "       i   n       t   h   
+e
0000120       b   o   d   y   .  \r  \n   <   /   b   o   d   y   >  \
+r
0000140  \n   <   /   h   t   m   l   >  \r  \n
0000152
[download]

After converting the line endings, it appears as follows:

$ od -c test.html
0000000   <   h   t   m   l   >  \n   <   h   e   a   d   >  \n   <   
+t
0000020   i   t   l   e   >   t   e   s   t   <   /   t   i   t   l   
+e
0000040   >  \n   <   /   h   e   a   d   >  \n   <   b   o   d   y   
+>
0000060  \n   T   h   i   s       i   s       s   o   m   e       "   
+t
0000100   e   x   t   "       i   n       t   h   e       b   o   d   
+y
0000120   .  \n   <   /   b   o   d   y   >  \n   <   /   h   t   m   
+l
0000140   >  \n
0000142
[download]

Now the lines end with "\n" only.

Depending on your unix installation, you may have a command "dos2unix". I used the vim editor. You might also be able to use the "tr" command as "tr -d '\r' <file.old >file.new"

How did you create your perl script files?