VinsWorldcom@C:\Users\VinsWorldcom\tmp> perl -v This is perl 5, version 16, subversion 1 (v5.16.1) built for MSWin32-x64-multi-thread [...] VinsWorldcom@C:\Users\VinsWorldcom\tmp> cat test.pl my $foo = "stuff"; open FD, "file.txt"; @data = ; close FD; foreach (@data) { s/XXYY/$foo/; print; } VinsWorldcom@C:\Users\VinsWorldcom\tmp> cat file.txt XXYY VinsWorldcom@C:\Users\VinsWorldcom\tmp> test.pl stuff