use Cwd; $BACK= getcwd(); open(LIST,"small.txt") or die "Cant open small.txt"; @arr= ; for($i = 0; $i < @arr; $i++) { chomp($arr[$i]); print "path read from file = $arr[$i]\n"; #it displays => ms_qu/the/path/written/in/file (fine till here but +it shud go to this place when i use chdir) chdir $arr[$i] or die "$1"; print "After chdir, cwd is = "; system("pwd"); chdir($BACK); print "Now im back to where i started"; system("pwd"); }