Read I know what I mean. Why don't you? (although given your handle it's not clear you know what you mean)!

Some general comments that don't address the problem that you hint at, but may help more in the long run:

Always use strictures use strict; use warnings;.

Use the three parameter open and check for success:

my $filename = '/stefan/cgi-bin/NoName01.txt';
open (FILE1, '<', $filename) or die "Open failed for $filename: $!";

[download]

Avoid slurping files. Use while (<FILE1>){...} to handle the file a "line" at a time.

Read the regex documentation in perlretut and perlre. Regexen are a large part of what Perl is about and a knowledge of what they can do will stand you in good stead. Note that you can always go back and re-read the docs to refresh the details, but having an idea of what is there is essential knowledge for Perl programmers.

DWIM is Perl's answer to Gödel

In reply to Re: help! reading in special characters from file by GrandFather
in thread help! reading in special characters from file by confused_programmer

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