I am having trouble with a simple sub-routine that i wrote. All it does is remove some unwanted characters from a file by substituting them with nothing. The problem is that when I call the sub-routine, i assign it to a variable called @derivative. When i print @derivative, i expect it to print the whole of the file, but infact it only prints the last section. Is there an obvious reason for this that I can't see??? Any help vastly appreciated ................ 


#! /usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

open (INFILE, $ARGV[0]) or die "unable to open file";
open (OUTFILE, $ARGV[1]) or die "unable to open file";

my $line;
my @derivative = replace($line);

print "@derivative\n";


sub replace {


      $line = @_;

  while (<INFILE>)    {

         $line = $_;
         chomp ($line);
         $line =~ s/data//;
         $line =~ s/=//;
         $line =~ s/detector//;
        
    }

  return $line;

}

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In reply to sub-routines by Anonymous Monk

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