Your error is that you do print FILE "$_\n"; unconditionally so that every line of your input file is printed to your output file. There are other problems with your code.

• Do you really want to append your results to data3.txt rather than overwriting the file each run?

• Whether you append or overwrite, open and close the file outside of the while loop.

• Test for the success of your close operation.

• It is recommended to use lexical rather than bare word filehandles and the three-argument form of open.

The code becomes

my $outFile = q{/home/btobin/data3.txt};
open my $outFH, q{>>}, $outFile
   or die qq{open: $outFile: $!\n};

while ( <$dataFH> )
{
    print $outFH qq{Found name $_\n} if /($namesPatt)/;
}

close $outFH
   or die qq{close: $outFile: $!\n};
[download]

I hope this is helpful.

Cheers,

JohnGG

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