I interpret your code as searching through these contract files for the "Management Fees" string, and then printing that line and the next 19 lines. If this is true then I think you're making it too difficult by slurping the entire file into a string, and then iteratively searching through that string, each time from the beginning.

If my interpretation is correct, here is a bit of code that does the same thing but processes the files line-by-line. Also it has code, which I think you requested, creating different output files for each input file. 

foreach my $contract (@contracts) {
    open (Contract1, "<", $contract)
        || die("Cannot open input file $contract: $!");

    my @all;
    while (<Contract1>) {
        if (/Management Fees/i) {
            # Print this line
            push @all, $_;
            # And the next 19 lines too
            for (my $i=0; $i<($linescount-1); $i++) {
                my $line = <Contract1>;
                last if !defined $line;
                push @all, $line;
            }
        }
    }
    close Contract1;

    # Base output filename on original filename.
    my $outfile = "$contract".".output";
    open (Contract1a, ">", $outfile)
        || die("Cannot open output file $outfile: $!");
    print Contract1a join("\n",(@all));
    close Contract1a;
}

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In reply to Re: Reading a Directory of Files, Searching for Text, Outputting Matches by gmargo
in thread Reading a Directory of Files, Searching for Text, Outputting Matches by NorthShore44

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