Hello cbtshare, and welcome to the Monastery!

Further to 1nickt’s post, if you open a file with +>> as the mode, the filehandle’s position is set to the end of the file. To read from the beginning, you need to add a seek:

seek XML, 0, 0;
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However, as 1nickt says, this won’t solve the problem. You want to update passwords within the file, and appending new data at the end of the file can’t accomplish that.

One approach is to use the core module Tie::File:

use strict;
use warnings;
use Tie::File;

my $filename = ...;

tie my @array, 'Tie::File', $filename
    or die "Cannot tie file '$filename' to array: $!";

for my $line (@array)
{
    my $newline = $line;    # Make a copy

    while ($line =~ / Name=(.*?) \s+ Password=(.*?) (?:\s+|$) /gx)
    {
        my $name     = $1;
        my $password = $2;
        print "Enter the plain text password for $name, ",
              "password is currently '$password'\n";

        chomp(my $newpass = <>);
        print "You will now swap $password for Password='$newpass'\n";
        print "Continue? (y/n)\n";
        chomp(my $answer  = <>);

        # Change the copy

        $newline =~ s{Password=\Q$password\E}{Password=$newpass}
            if $answer =~ /y/i;
    }

    $line = $newline;       # Update this line in the file
}

untie @array
    or die "Cannot untie file '$filename': $!";
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Note that it’s necessary to make the progressive password substitutions to a copy of $line, because changing $line within the while loop resets the /g match position, resulting in an infinite loop. See, e.g., “Global matching” in Using regular expressions in Perl.

Hope that helps,

Ok, thank you all for your comments and new approach, I will give the new approach a try now and let you know. also, I should have mentioned this is the structure of the file I am reading:

<Node Name="MUN" Type="Connection" Descr="" Icon="mRemoteNG" Panel="Ge
+neral" Username="root" Domain="" Password="a/5pqLSsMnvRfylxdN6coiFTdc
+2+$

<Node Name="ubunugit" Type="Connection" Descr="" Icon="mRemoteNG" Pane
+l="General" Username="root" Domain="" Password="bBxKPKXIhw1wKEV9aEUN1
+yynoRGOWT$
</Node>
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Thank you

I meant to say earlier, if your input is XML — as indicated by the file extension and filehandle name in your OP — then you’ll be better off reading it with a dedicated module, such as XML::LibXML or XML::Twig.

However, the file excerpt you show here is not valid XML.

Athanasius <°(((>< contra mundum

Iustus alius egestas vitae, eros Piratica,

Thank you Athanasius for your input and sample script, it works, but I have an issue with the formatting. the line below

print "Enter the plain text password for $name, ",
              "password is currently '$password'\n";
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print out the entire line but I want only the name and password to show up it shows

Enter the plain text password for "Q9" Type="Container" Expanded="True
+" Descr="" Icon="mRemote" Panel="General" Username="" Domain="", pass
+word is currently '""'
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I tried the following to just get the name and password only but it only returns 0 and 1 lol

 my @names = grep /\bName=(.*?)/ , @array;
    my @password = grep /\bPassword=(.*?)/ , @array;

    my $newline = $line;    # Make a copy

 print "name is $names[0] and password is $password[0]\n";
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Also can you please tell me what the following means from your code.

?:\s+|$) /mgx
also

Q$password\E}
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... can you please tell me what the following means from your code.

?:\s+|$) /mgx
also

Q$password\E}

This should be  (?:\s+|$) (a non-capturing grouping),
and  s{Password=\Q$password\E}{...} (the match regex of a substitution).

To explain these:

c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -le
"use YAPE::Regex::Explain;
 ;;
 print YAPE::Regex::Explain->new('(?:\s+|$)')->explain;
 ;;
 my $password = 'f+o*o?[ ]b{}r';
 my $regex = qr/Password=\Q$password\E/;
 print YAPE::Regex::Explain->new($regex)->explain;
"
The regular expression:

(?-imsx:(?:\s+|$))

matches as follows:

NODE                     EXPLANATION
----------------------------------------------------------------------
(?-imsx:                 group, but do not capture (case-sensitive)
                         (with ^ and $ matching normally) (with . not
                         matching \n) (matching whitespace and #
                         normally):
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  (?:                      group, but do not capture:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
    \s+                      whitespace (\n, \r, \t, \f, and " ") (1
                             or more times (matching the most amount
                             possible))
----------------------------------------------------------------------
   |                        OR
----------------------------------------------------------------------
    $                        before an optional \n, and the end of
                             the string
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  )                        end of grouping
----------------------------------------------------------------------
)                        end of grouping
----------------------------------------------------------------------

The regular expression:

(?-imsx:Password=f\+o\*o\?\[\ \]b\{\}r)

matches as follows:

NODE                     EXPLANATION
----------------------------------------------------------------------
(?-imsx:                 group, but do not capture (case-sensitive)
                         (with ^ and $ matching normally) (with . not
                         matching \n) (matching whitespace and #
                         normally):
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  Password=f               'Password=f'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  \+                       '+'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  o                        'o'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  \*                       '*'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  o                        'o'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  \?                       '?'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  \[                       '['
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  \                        ' '
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  \]                       ']'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  b                        'b'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  \{                       '{'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  \}                       '}'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  r                        'r'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
)                        end of grouping
----------------------------------------------------------------------
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Remember that  \Q...\E metaquotes any non-\w character literal or interpolated character. See the  \Q \L \l \U \u \E interpolation control escape sequences in Quote and Quote-like Operators in perlop; see also quotemeta.

---

Give a man a fish:  <%-{-{-{-<

Reading from and writing to the same open filehandle is tricky.

It may be better to open the file in read mode, read in the data, close the file, process the data, open again in write mode ( '>' ) and write the whole file anew.

You could also adapt the technique to save a backup copy of the file before you write out the new data.

HTH

Welcome, cbtshare! For future reference, consistent formatting in your code would be more inviting of comment from passing monks. Your code is, shall we say, not pleasant to study. Suggest more use of the preview function until you get satisfactory results.