I think you want:

my $word=shift;

instead of:

my $word=$_;

Outside of a subroutine, shift removes the first element from the @ARGV array, which usually contains program arguments (like C and C++'s "argv" parameter to main()).

In reply to Re: use of uninitialized value in concatenation by William G. Davis
in thread use of uninitialized value in concatenation by Anonymous Monk

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