Perl rename won't cooperate!

[Razz]

I have tried all combinations of quotes and parens in the 'rename ("$file.dat", "$file") || die "can't rename file.dat";' statement. Of course, I started with no quotes or parens at first. The rename to .orig works, the rename to $file does nothing (p.s. don't get the die message either?). Any idea what can be wrong here??

Print of $file and $file.dat From my logfile...
9/18/2002 14:32:43 Updating School Code for Spara9002.txt:
9/18/2002 14:32:43 in = Spara9002.txt
9/18/2002 14:32:43 out = Spara9002.txt.dat

}

sub doit {
my $file;
my $fdir;

$file = @_[0];
$fdir = "D:\\Inetpub\\ftproot\\datafeeds\\Cardtrans\0000All"

logit "Updating School Code for $file:";

open(IN,$file) || die "cannot open $file for READ: $!";
open(OUT,">$file.dat") || die "cannot WRITE $file: $!";
while () { # read 1 line from $file into $_
$_ = substr($_, 134, 5) . substr($_, 5);
print OUT $_; # print current line to $file.dat;

}
close IN;
close OUT;
chmod (0666,$file.dat);
rename ("$file.dat", "$file") || die "can't rename file.dat";
rename $file, "$file.orig";
logit "in = $file";
logit "out = $file.dat";

}


{