while( (<>) && counter <10){

[download]
Setting aside all the other matters already addressed by other posters, AFAIK while's magic with angular parentheses holds only for the 
while(<>) {  # ...

[download]
construct (or the equivalent one including an explicit filehandle).

Update: (to better explain myself) hence your script, even if corrected from the obvious error, would give you a "Use of uninitialized value in print" warning.

Also, unless you chomp it shouldn't be necessary to include "\n" in your output string. Unless you really want double spacing. In any case I'd probably locally set $\ suitably instead.

Hence all in all I'd simply do: 

while (<>) {
    print;
    last if $. == 10;
}

[download]

In reply to Re: peeling the top 10 lines from a file by blazar
in thread peeling the top 10 lines from a file by jjohhn

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.