yeah most of my question has been answered. but i got it down now.. thanks all for the responses.. its greatly appreciated..

I knew how to get a random line read in a file but didnt quite understand how to get a random file opened and do what i needed until i started playing around with it and took advice of others and got a copy of perl cookbook..the following is what i came up with for what I need to be done

#!/usr/bin/perl

my @names = qw(x.txt l.txt m.txt);
my $random_file = $names[rand @names];

if($random_file eq "l.txt") {

open FILE, "l.txt" or die "Error Opening: Cannot open file!";
@emails = <FILE>;
close FILE;
$email = $emails[int(rand($#emails +1))];
chomp($email);
print "$email\n";

}elsif($random_file eq "x.txt"){

open FILE, "x.txt" or die "Error Opening: Cannot open file!";
@emails = <FILE>;
close FILE;
$email = $emails[int(rand($#emails +1))];
chomp($email);
print "$email\n";

}elsif($random_file eq "m.txt"){

open FILE, "m.txt" or die "Error Opening: Cannot open file!";
@emails = <FILE>;
close FILE;
$email = $emails[int(rand($#emails +1))];
chomp($email);
print "$email\n";
}

[download]

any feedback on this would also be appreciated... any suggestions or tips to better the way i am doing this? any and all information is always appreciated :) thanks again

In reply to Re^2: Opening random files then reading random lines from file. by fame
in thread Opening random files then reading random lines from file. by fame

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.