Thank you very much for triying to help me out. However I now get a permission error. "could not open /x02/bee/MY_FILE Permission denied at ./base_ports.pl line 9, <FH2> line 3103. but when I tried to open the file before going on to the regex section it just works, As in it opens up the files on the screen

my %users = %{user_paths()};
foreach my $user (keys %users) {
    if (-e "$users{$user}/MY_FILE") {
        open (FH2, "<$users{$user}/MY_FILE") or die "could not open $u
+sers{$user}/MY_FILE $!";
             while (my $line = <FH2>) {
             print $line;
                     }
    }
 }
[download]

Also I tried commented out the die function and tried to riun and then I get that same "readline" error. Any thoughts?

can you open /x02/bee/MY_FILE from the command line with something like cat? What are the perms if you ls -l /x02/bee/MY_FILE? Does this match your user/group settings?

Cheers,
R.

Pereant, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt!

Thanks. Yes there are no problems with the file permissions sir. Each and every one of those files have read permission.

Can you try this version and see if any files are opened?

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

# my $fname = '.profile';
my $fname = 'MY_FILE';
my %users =  %{user_paths()};
for my $user (keys %users) {
    my $fh;
    if (open $fh, '<', "$users{$user}/$fname") {
        while (my $line = <$fh>) {
            if ($line =~ /BASE_PORT=(\d+)/) {
                print  "$user --> $1";
            }
        }
    }
    else {
        warn "couldn't open $users{$user}/MY_FILE $!";
    }
}

sub user_paths {
    my %users;
    open my $fh, '<', "/etc/passwd" || die "Can't Open : $!";
    while (<$fh>) {
        my @user = split (/:/);
        if ( $user[2] > 500 ) {
            $users{$user[0]} = "$user[5]";
        }
    }
    return \%users;
}
[download]

Cheers,
R.

Pereant, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt!

Thank you very much R, It worked. :) I owe a big apology to people who tried to help me out because I found out that the string I was looking for in the "MY_FILE" file was "SREG_PORT" not "BASE_PORT". I have wasted your time and mine over some silly thing that I should have easily realized. Sorry gentlemen

Mr R, with right key word being searched the script I initially mentioned in my question also works but I do get that readline error message printed only once on the screen. I tried tweaking the scrit a bit but no luck. Im gonna use your script as it is very clean and solid, but Id still like to realize what I have done wrong to get that error.

following is the output when I run my version of script

supun  -->  40000
  sam  -->  25000
readline() on closed filehandle $fh at ./base_ports.pl line 11.
  binasha  -->  10000
  bundy -->  37000
  binjiya  -->  5000
[download]

Following is my version of script

my $fname = 'MY_FILE';
my %users =  %{user_paths()};
foreach my $user (keys %users) {
        my $fh;
    if (-e "$users{$user}/$fname") {
    open ($fh, '<', "$users{$user}/$fname"); 
    while (my $line = <$fh>) { 
            if ($line =~ /S_REG_PORT_NO=(\d+)/) {
               print "  $user  -->  $1\n";
                
            }
        }
    }
  }

sub user_paths {
    my %users;
    open my $fh, '<', "/etc/passwd" || die "Can't Open : $!";
    while (<$fh>) {
        my @user = split (/:/);
        if ( $user[2] > 500 ) {
        $users{$user[0]} = "$user[5]";
                    
        }
    }
    return \%users;
    }
[download]

Only different thing Im doing here is that Im checking the existence of the file first with the "-e". Please help me figure this out. I just like to learn is all :) thanks again for helping out gentlemen.