use warnings;
use strict;
use Fcntl qw(SEEK_CUR);

# open existing file for read/write
open (my $in, '+<', 'file1.txt') || die "Unable to open file1.txt:$!";

while (<$in>) {

    # Identify the record
    if (/4444/) {
         # Construct the new record
         s/4/#/g;

         # Position the file pointer
         seek ($in, -length($_)-1, SEEK_CUR);
         print $in $_;
    }
}

close $in;