Take a look at Tie::File. It comes as standard with some perl distributions.

#! perl -lsw
use strict;

use Tie::File;

tie my @array, 'Tie::File', 'array.file';

push @array, @ARGV;

print for @array;
__END__
P:\test>333115 the quick brown fox
the
quick
brown
fox

P:\test>333115 the sixth sick shiek's sixth sheep was sick
the
quick
brown
fox
the
sixth
sick
shiek's
sixth
sheep
was
sick
[download]

Uh, this is a bit embarrasing, but...
I'm very new to perl. I don't think you can be much newer than me. Could you give me some little snippet of code with an example of what you're saying, Roger?

Thanks again,
OxYgEn

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use IO::File;
use Data::Serializer;
use Data::Dumper;

my @list;

my $s = Data::Serializer->new(
                          serializer => 'Storable',
                          portable   => 0,
                          compress   => 0,
                        );

if (-s "./list.bin") {
    print "Load ice and thaw\n";
    
    my $f = new IO::File "./list.bin", "r" or die;
    my $ice = do { local $/; <$f> };
    @list = @{$s->thaw($ice)};

    print Dumper(\@list);
} else {
    print "Build list and freeze\n";

    @list = qw/ 0 1 2 3 /;
    my $ice = $s->freeze(\@list);

    my $f = new IO::File "./list.bin", "w" or die;
    print $f $ice;
}
[download]

It can be very handy. Just store your array in an inline file and rewrite the file as needed.

Ted

Quick and dirty, but not necessarily correct and elegant solution would be:

1. to store some special string like "THE_END" as the last one in the array
2. if the array changes, to open up the Perl script itself, read it line by line, and when you come across "THE_END" (your array end), substitute that with $new_string.", "THE_END" (or basically, concatenate "THE_END" to the new string and then append the whole string to the array
3. save the file

I know, I know, inefficient and quite dirty, but if you need it real fast (besides - of you need it really fast with no downbloadable modules available, like your computer is not online at the moment), that should work.