You could have gained some insight into the basic problem (single-quotes don't interpolate) if you had put the file path and name, delimited to show any leading or trailing whitespace, into the error message — and the error  $! too!: 

my $directory = '/home/psimo/it441/challenge/logs';                   
...        
my $theFile = ...;
...
my $path_file = "$directory/$theFile";
open my $fh, '<', $path_file or die "opening '$path_file': $!"; 
...

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(I'm also using a lexical filehandle rather than a global one, another good practice.)

Give a man a fish:  <%-{-{-{-<

In reply to Re: Grab input from the user and Open the file by AnomalousMonk
in thread Grab input from the user and Open the file by valerydolce

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