Verbal, I tried the code out the way you had asked.It takes the input in however, it doesn't do anything with it. By the way, I am the one, who is trying to read the total from a file, and spit it out to another file. My code reads following:

print "Input file name: ";
$_ = <>;
chop;
open(INFILE, $_);
    while (<INFILE>)
      {
         if (m/total/)
            {
                s/^total\s[0-9]+\s[0-9]+\s([0-9]+)\s([0-9]+)$/$1 $2/;
                print;
             }
           }
         close INFILE;
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I think the codes seems OK. THe name of the file that i will be reading the data from is called, "elements". My question is, I am not sure if the file is even being read, or parsed. How would I print out the parsed information?? Thanks Paav