my @teststr; my %testhash; $teststr[0] = "32977186 4 -rw-r--r-- 1 owner mygrp 65 Aug 4 13:16 /long/path/to/my/file/file1.txt"; $teststr[1] = "32977186 4 -rw-r--r-- 1 owner mygrp 65 Aug 4 13:16 /long/path/to/my/file/file2.txt";