system_prompt>my_script.pl $file1
system_prompt>my_script.pl $file2
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If you're really doing this, with no intervening actions, and always having two files to process, you could instead do this:

system_prompt>my_script.pl $file1 $file2
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And then, in my_script.pl:

die "Usage: $0 file1 file2" unless @ARGV == 2;
...
for (@ARGV) {
    process_file($_);
}
...
sub process_file {
    my ($filename) = @_;

    open my $input_fh, '<', $filename or die "Can't open '$filename': 
+$!";
    ...
}
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You have other issues in your code which you'll need to address. One that leapt out at me was this infinite loop:

my $exit = '';
until ($exit) {
    ... code where $exit never becomes TRUE ...
}
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You have two last statements but both are conditional on a pattern match. You should really have a bailout option, i.e. if you've done everything possible in the loop but are still looping, then die, warn and last or similar — and, instead of until ($exit) {...}, use while (1) {...} and get rid of the $exit variable altogether.

sub infile($file1); #will this be passed to ARGV[0]?
...
sub infile(file2);  #will this be sent to ARGV[0] as well after the fi
+rst file?
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Your (commented) questions about passing/sending to ARGV[0] [which should be $ARGV[0]] suggest you haven't really got a handle on the @ARGV array but, unfortunately, I don't know what you haven't understood. Take a look at "perlvar: Variables related to filehandles" and "perlop: I/O Operators". See what both of those sections say about @ARGV: that should either clarify the purpose and usage of @ARGV or, if not, provide you with the basis for more specific questions.

the last statement /can/ be one of many, and in my code you will see that i can add a last statement before or after formatting from hex to plain text, which is great that i could understand that, but on my observance in the files, it will always end with just the two that are in my code, if i come across a different "last" statement then i can easily add it in. the infinite loop would only happen if i didnt know what was in the file ;)
im just trying to grasp the subroutine stuff :) i admit i am still pretty new to perl but it has been by far the best language to use so far.
thanks for the ideas man, cheers :)

perl process_files.pl file1.txt file2.txt
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for $inputfile (@ARGV) {
     process_file ($inputfile);
}
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but see, i wont know the file until i parse the main file. The file you looked at before in the other thread is part of another file, its a table within a table within a table.


psuedocode:

open main file for parsing; #not file1 or file2
parse out each file within this file;
when reach $file1 send to subroutine;
when reach $file2 send to subroutine;
exit script;
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its hard to explain actually lol. All the files will be handled basically the same way as this subroutine above but will be a little bit different.
The Main File has around 60 files inside of it. when you open the file in any hex editor... it has references just like the file i think you looked at a few days ago with file 1-25. the main thing with this script is will it allow me to go to $file1 and send it thru the sub routine, then go to $file2 and then send it thru the subroutine.

TL;DR
In essence these two files are within another file that i am parsing via hex offsets. i want to send each file thru one at a time in the same script.
so i think this will work correct? :


my $file1 = 'extracted/file1';
sub infile($file1);
my $file2 = 'extracted/file2';
sub infile = 'extracted/file2';
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Then we are talking about something much closer to the first approach I was mentionning. You basically need to read the first file, collect and store in an array (or some other data structure) the names of the files to be processed, and then process each of these files. And a subroutine is really necessary to avoid code duplication.