I'm not sure from your description exactly what you're seeking to do: open file A, do stuff to the contents, and print something out to file B? (do you want to then *read* from file B? that's what I'm not sure of)

Also, please tell us *what* the error message you're getting is.

That said, the solution to your problem may be as simple as changing your fourth line to read:

open (OUT, ">$inputfile.out") or die "cannot open $inputfile.out: $!\n
+";
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Note that not only will that create a new file, it will overwrite any existing file with the same name; depending on what else you're doing, this may or many not be a problem.

Philosophy can be made out of anything. Or less -- Jerry A. Fodor