Hi there, I'm trying to divide a file into several files based on part of each line: 
#use strict;
open ALUS, "Z:\\3\' UTR intron project\\Alu_bed.bed" ||die "couldn't o
+pen alus!!";

my %seen;
while (<ALUS>){
    /(chr.*?)\t/;
    if (exists $seen{$1}){
        print $1 "$_";
    }else{
    $seen{$1}="whatever";
        open $1, ">Z:\\3\' UTR intron project\\Alu_chroms\\$1.txt"||di
+e "couldn't open $1 file!";
               print $1 "$_";
    }
}

[download]

Works when I comment out the use strict;, otherwise, I get the dreaded "Can't use string ("chr1") as a symbol ref while "strict refs" in use at divide_chroms_Alu.pl line 12, <ALUS> line 1."

I tried all sorts of things with curly braces and stars and slashes that I found in various threads on the interwebs, but I must be crazy, because I couldn't get them to work! and what the hell is a glob? advice?

In reply to varaible to filehandle -alack! by maayanster

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