in reply to increment id num

Jenni,
You could use the magic built into the ++ operator outlined in perldoc perlop. Since you have already explained what you are doing, I provide just the last step.
$array[0]++;
If you don't want to use magic:
my ($letter, $number) = $array[0] =~ /(\w)(\d+)/; $number++; $number = sprintf("%.6d", $number); $array[0] = $letter . $number;

Those steps could be simplified, but I did them step by step so that you could see what was going on.

Cheers - L~R