perl -lane "shift @F;print qq(@F)" filename.ext #### perl -MO=Deparse -lane "shift @F;print qq(@F)" # the BEGIN block is executed as soon as possible,so is not repeted at every iteration over file's lines # input and output record separator set by -l see again perlvar BEGIN { $/ = "\n"; $\ = "\n"; } # the while loop created by -n (do not consider the LINE: label for the moment) LINE: while (defined($_ = )) { # remove newline at the end of current string (again provided by -l) chomp $_; # autosplit provided by -a our(@F) = split(' ', $_, 0); # our program starts here shift @F; print "@F"; } -e syntax OK