#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my $file_in = "C:/Users/Joe/Documents/Genealogy/birdt.ged";
open my $FILE, "<", $file_in or die "could not open $file_in $!";        # three-argument open syntax
my @ged = <$FILE>;                      # slurp the file contents into @ged

my $count = $.; 
print "no. of records:  $count \n" ;    # counting the number of records

my $i=0;                                # stepping through the array $count = 5174
for ($i= 0; $i<$count; $i=$i+1)
{print "$i    $ged[$i]\n"; }