I understand..thanks. I found the issue but I still do not have a solution. When reading the text files, one of the file I read in a string (by setting undef $/). Therefore when I go the next file and want to read it line by line, I am getting the issue. Now I am doing a $/='\n'; before I read the next file line by line. But this is not helping. The file is being read in one line. Any clues why? Thanks