# ... @r = ; chomp @r; #### #!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; my $file = 'data.txt'; open my $datfh, '<', $file or die "$file: open(ro) failed: $!\n"; while ( my $line = <$datfh> ) { chomp $line; my @fields = split /\|/, $line; # work with your data fields } close $datfh or die "$file: close(ro) failed: $!\n";