while(<@eachline>){ #### $ perl -MO=Deparse -e'while(<@eachline>){}' use File::Glob (); while (defined($_ = glob(join($", @eachline)))) { (); } -e syntax OK #### $ perl -le'my @eachline = ( "one two three four\n", "five six seven eight\n" ); while(<@eachline>){print}' one two three four five six seven eight #### use strict; use warnings; open my $FILEHANDLE, "<", "Action5.c" or die "cannot open < Action5.c: $!"; my %patterns = ( transaction => 0, find => 0, think => 0, save_param => 0, start_sub => 0, url => 0, submit => 0, ); while ( my $line = <$FILEHANDLE> ) { for my $pattern ( keys %patterns ) { $patterns{ $pattern } += () = $line =~ /$pattern/g; } } for my $pattern ( keys %patterns ) { print "Number of patterns found for".$pattern." is ".$patterns{ $pattern }."\n"; } close $FILEHANDLE;