my @files = ("/mnt/csphil/home/fburns/domereports/Weekly_Reports/de-nj-md", "/mnt/csphil/home/fburns/domereports/Weekly_Reports/pa_only", "/mnt/csphil/home/fburns/domereports/Weekly_Reports/phila_market"); my $file; my (@data, @lines); for $file (@files){ open (FH, $file) || die "Unable to open file $file\n"; @data = ; close (FH); push (@lines, $data[$#data]); } undef @data; # Don't waste memory