I tried to replace the following line-

open my $fh, '<', \$file or die "unable to open read file $!";
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with -

my $filename = 'file.txt';
open(my $fh, '<:encoding(UTF-8)', $filename)
  or die "Could not open file '$filename' $!";
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and it doesn't give an output or any error. Any clue? --------------------------------------------------------------- oh, never mind... had to use chomp. chomp($line);