software estimation

I have a piece of code written to copy files, and a lot more, to a mainframe. I have to write another piece of code, from scratch, to do the same of actions to the same set to a UNIX box. I have to estimate how long it will take to write the second piece using the first piece as my starting block. Does anyone know of any methodologies which I can say, given x lines of code, it may take me n hours? The target language is PERL, but I could substitute C/C++ at a pinch.

>>19
Sorry, badly constructed english. I copy the files, then run stuff like other scripts for compiling etc etc. Then copy the results back.

>>17
Balmer has a rant about IBM concerning this. I just want to do a test, seeing as I already have code which does a similar thing but I can't re-use it the new domain.

Actually, the total LOC *tested* hides the fact that you probably write about 4 times more than what you produce. My way of working is to constantly rework my solution until someone tells me to stop, or it looks finished. As I write, I find bugs, I rewrite, I think of neat solutions, rewrite. Even with all this re-writing, the metric I found on the net resembled my work-rate very neatly. I tend to write docs and tests as well, as well as multi-task support tasks, so maybe I'm not so bad after all :-)