Hi,
you need to make the old largest number the second_largest if there is a new largest one.
I fixed some other minor things as well. 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my @input = <DATA>; chomp @input;

my $largest_value = 0;
my $second_value = 0;

for (@input){
    #$value = substr($input[$i], 0, 6); why? Perl can dwal with floati
+ng point numbers
    if($_ > $largest_value){
      $second_value = $largest_value;
      $largest_value= $_;
    }
    elsif(($_ > $second_value) && ($_ < $largest_value)){
      $second_value = $_;
    }
}
print "$largest_value $second_value\n";

__DATA__
0.2430
0.0830
0.1320
0.0920
0.0180
0.0880
0.3440

[download]
prints 
0.3440 0.2430

[download]

Regards,
svenXY

In reply to Re: extracting the largest values by svenXY
in thread extracting the largest values by Angharad

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