my $filename = 'yourfilename.txt'; open FILE, "$filename" || die "cant open file for read"; @data = ; close FILE; for my $line (0..$#data) { # execute process method -- do your operation stuffs here. &process($data[$line]); # if you want to delete, make the line with null value; $data[$line] = ""; } $entirefile = join "\n", @data; open OUT, "outfile.txt" || die "cant open file for write"; print OUT $entirefile; close OUT;