I hope a few general remarks are welcome.

I would suggest you to use use strict; and use warnings;.

And please don't use $a and $b, the are even with use strict; not under the strict conditions, because there are used by sort.

Edit: I should renew the page before answering. Grandfather was faster and he did better.

In reply to Re^3: chopping the beginning and end of lines in 2 files by Crian
in thread chopping the beginning and end of lines in 2 files by heidi

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