Sounds like you tried to get the filename into the $file variable by parsing it out of a directory listing. For example, you might have done something like

for my $file (`ls -l /some/dir`) { ... }
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If you show us the code next time, you'll probably get a more thorough response.

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

Further, if this is the case

 for my $file (`ls -l /some/dir`) { ... }
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then you may be interested in  ls -1, or better still, for a pure Perl method the  readdir function. From perlfunc:

    opendir(DIR, $some_dir) || die "can't opendir $some_dir: $!";
    @files= grep { -f "$some_dir/$_" } readdir(DIR);
    closedir DIR;
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I use the following subroutine to wrap around mailx, which you may find to be a useful starting point

 
#
# mailit - send an email using mailx. Accepts either a $body or a path
+ 
# to a file
#
# Args:
#   $subject  - email subject
#   either:
#     $body     - body of email in scalar var, or         
#     $fname    - path to file to send.
#   @emails   - list of email addresses to send email to
#
sub mailit {
        my ( $subj, $body, $fname, @email ) = @_;
        
        my($mailcmd) = "mailx -s\"$subj\"";
        die "Invalid mailit args\n" unless ($subj and ($body or $fname
+));
        
        if ($body) {
                foreach ( @email ) {
                        open( PI, "|$mailcmd $_" ) or warn "Pipe to ma
+ilx failed: $mailcmd\n";
                        print PI $body;
                        print PI "\n.\n";
                        close PI;
                }        
        } elsif ($fname) {
                die "Bad mailit path $fname\n " unless -e $fname;
                foreach (  @email ) {
                        `$mailcmd $_ < $fname` or warn "bad mailx resp
+onse: $?, $!";
                }        
        }        
}
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Disclaimer: modified for posting, so untested.

mailit(), in conjunction with readdir, should do what you want.

Hope this helps, bm.