Populating a hash

[Kenneth Singleton]

I'm trying to do those time honored exercises from the llama book and having
some trouble.
This is the subroutine I'm using:


sub init_words {
  while ($filename = <*.secret>) {
    open (WORDSLIST, $filename) || die "can't open $filename: $!";
    if (-M WORDSLIST < 7.0) {
      while ($name = <WORDSLIST>) {
        chomp ($name);
        $word = <WORDSLIST>;
        chomp ($word);
        $words{$name} = $word;
      }
    } else {
      rename ($filename, "$filename.old") || die "can't rename $filename:
$!";
    }
    close WORDSLIST;
  }
}


I don't get any error messages, but neither do I get the variables that I
need for the program to execute properly. Any help would be appreciated.