use strict; use warnings; my ($sector,$path); my @sectorOutputFiles; my @fh; $path="blah"; my $filenamefirstpart=''; for($sector=0;$sector<12;$sector++){ $sectorOutputFiles[$sector]=$path.$filenamefirstpart.$sector.".txt"; print STDERR $sectorOutputFiles[$sector], "\n"; open($fh[$sector],'>',$sectorOutputFiles[$sector]) or die "Can't open sector filehandler for writing: $!\n"; }