Pay particular attention the comments. You haven't made your particular situtation (file formats, etc.) completely known, so I've made some assumptions.

At the very least, this should provide a good starting point. Good luck!

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
#
# note: this assumes that each line in email_list.txt contains only
#       one email address
 
use strict;
 
open (EMAIL, "< email_list.txt") || die "cannot open email_list.txt: $
+!";       #open email address file
while (my $email_address = <EMAIL>) {
    chomp($email_address);
    open (OUT, ">$email_address.txt") || die "cannot open $email_addre
+ss: $!";
    open (JOHN, "< john.txt") || die "cannot open john.txt: $!";
    while (my $main_input = <JOHN>) {
            chomp($main_input);
            if ($main_input =~ /email=/) {
#               matching email addresses is tricky, so YMMV on the #  
+          following
                $main_input =~ s/([a-zA-Z0-9]{3})\@([a-zA-Z0-9\.\-]*)\
+%?.*$/$email_address/;
            }
            print OUT "$main_input\n";
    }
    close JOHN;
    close OUT;
}
close EMAIL;
[download]

Update: Added close EMAIL;

If things get any worse, I'll have to ask you to stop helping me.

use strict;
use File::Copy;

my $dest_file = "email.lst";
my $searchstr = 'blue';
my $repstr    = 'foo';

open(FL, $dest_file) or die("Doh - $!");

# turn on inplace edit flag (see. man perlvar)
$^I = '~';
s/$searchstr/$repstr/g while <FL>;

close(FL);

move($dest_file, $repstr);
[download]

broquaint

Also it might be easier to help if you show us the code you have so far.

--Jim

I am having a hard time getting this started.

To explain further what I want to do, I currently have 1 file with a list of email addresses. These I am trying to use as my variables. I have another text file where I need to search for "email=john.edu" and replace with email=new_address.edu. Then I would like to save this file with the changes as new_address.txt. I have 100 email addresses in my list. I would like this process to repeat until the end of the adresses. I should have 100 new text files in this directory.

I am new to perl and really do not know where to start. I don't know how to read in my email list and search to replace just the new email address and save the entire file before continuing with the loop.

open (FILEHANDLE, "<$john.txt");    #open main file
open (DATA, "<email_list.txt");
@lines = <DATA>;
$/ = "\";
while (<DATA>)
{
#PROCESS AND UPDATE A RECORD
}
[download]

If you can think of a better way to do this, please let me know. Thanks!!!!