sub findtext
{
    my ($fileargs, $inputs) = @_; # pass references to arrays
    my @filenames;
    for my $arg ( @$fileargs ) {  # dereference this array
        push @filenames, grep /\w/, split( /\W+/, $arg );
    }
    for my $file ( @filenames ) {
        unless open( FILE, "/home/jroberts/$file.txt" ) {
            warn "open failed on $file: $!";
            next;
        }
        while (<FILE>) {
            for my $term ( @$inputs ) { # dereference this array
                next unless ( /\b$term\b/ );
                # get here when there's a match...
                # (not sure what you want to do here)
            }
        }
    }
}

##</code><code>##

    my %input;
    $input{$_} = undef for @$inputs;  # make this a hash

    $/ = undef; # look up $/ in perldoc perlvar
    unless ( open( FILE, ...)) {
        #blah
        next;
    }
    $text = <FILE>;  # $text holds entire file content.
    $text =~ s/\n\n/ &lt;P&gt; /; # (optional: preserve paragraph boundaries)

    @words = split( /\s+/, $text );

    for my $i (0..$#words) {
        next unless ( exists( $input{$word[$i]} ));

        # get here when there's a match, output matched
        # word along with "N" words of surrounding context
        # (left as an exercise...)
    }