Your syntax is wrong. Each time you say <FILE> you get another line - you do this twice for each while loop but only assign and print one line. Thus you skip every second line. You don't need the ' quotes either. Here is a script that does it two different ways. $. is the current line in the file. $_ is a magical Perl var that contains the line in the first chunk of example code. First you see the code, then its output.

C:\>type test.pl

print "\nRead files off command line\n";
while(<>) {
   print "$.  $_";
}

print "\n\nRead file in usual way\n";
$file = 'c:/test.pl';
open F, "<$file" or die "Oops Perl says $!";
while (my $line = <F>) {
  print "$.  $line";
}
close F;

print "\n\n\nPerl Rocks!\n";


C:\>perl test.pl test.pl

Read files off command line
1  print "\nRead files off command line\n";
2  while(<>) {
3     print "$.  $_";
4  }
5
6  print "\n\nRead file in usual way\n";
7  $file = 'c:/test.pl';
8  open F, "<$file" or die "Oops Perl says $!";
9  while (my $line = <F>) {
10    print "$.  $line";
11  }
12  close F;
13
14  print "\n\n\nPerl Rocks!\n";

Read file in usual way
1  print "\nRead files off command line\n";
2  while(<>) {
3     print "$.  $_";
4  }
5
6  print "\n\nRead file in usual way\n";
7  $file = 'c:/test.pl';
8  open F, "<$file" or die "Oops Perl says $!";
9  while (my $line = <F>) {
10    print "$.  $line";
11  }
12  close F;
13
14  print "\n\n\nPerl Rocks!\n";


Perl Rocks!

C:\>
[download]

cheers

tachyon

s&&rsenoyhcatreve&&&s&n.+t&"$'$`$\"$\&"&ee&&y&srve&&d&&print

while (<'FILE'>) {
  $gline = $_;
  print $gline;
}
[download]

This should fix your problem. The perl parser will not care what the content of the lines you are reading in, and shold never mangle them.

-monkfish (The fishy monk)