For a start always use strictures: use strict; use warnings;.

It may be smart to chomp the input you read from <STDIN>:

my $file = <STDIN>;

chomp $file;
$file ||= "somelist";

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DWIM is Perl's answer to Gödel

In reply to Re: Adding Default Values [for BEGINNERS] by GrandFather
in thread Adding Default Values [for BEGINNERS] by brusimm

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