I suspect that your failure to put the code in your question in a code block is the reason people are finding you hard to answer. 
      if($tmp[0] eq ">") {
        my $nm = substr($line,1);
        $nm = $nm . $tot;
        $tot++;
        $line = <$IFH>; #IS THIS THE LINE YOU MEANT ?
        chomp $line;
        $ret{$nm} = $line;
      }

[download]
If my guess is correct it means exactly the same as the same code in the while ($line = <$IFH>){ line that surrounds the read.

It reads the next line into the $line variable (If not end of file) within a block which is only run if the previous line began with a ">" character.

print "Good ",qw(night morning afternoon evening)[(localtime)[2]/6]," fellow monks."

In reply to Re: need a clearer understanding by Utilitarian
in thread need a clearer understanding by DanielM0412

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.