#! perl -sw use strict; my $file = $ARGV[0]; open I, '<', $file or die $!; my @outs; open $outs[ $_ ], '>', "$file.$_" or die $! for 1 .. 4; my $out = 1; while( ) { print { $outs[ $out ] } $_; if( /^5/ ) { ++$out; $out = 1 if $out > 4; } }