ruzam++ has given you some very good advice about how to organize your algorithm.

You don't say how much of perl you are expected to know or use. CPAN has lots of modules which would help, up to nearly solving the whole thing. I'll mention a couple which would help with discrete pieces of the problem.

You start by parsing an option from the command line. The Getopt::Long module provides the standard way of doing that. It works for multiple options and preserves input filenames listed on the command line. That is probably where you should get the name of the file to crunch. Getopt::Long is a base module distributed with perl, so if you are allowed any modules at all, it should be acceptable.

The roman numeral requirement for paging is an entertaining subproblem which your instructor may wish you to solve for yourself. There is the Math::Roman module to do it for you, however. You can increment a Math::Roman numeric variable and stringification will produce the roman representation. Math::Roman is not a base module, but is available from CPAN.

Good luck, and have fun. This seems like an enjoyable exercise to learn with.

If the instructor is giving an assignment to write code in Perl, I would expect them to be aware of all Perl code that is commonly known to be available on the internet(i.e. CPAN). Assigning a problem where a known solution is posted on CPAN seems absurd to me. A better approach in my mind would be to say: study the Math::Roman module that can be found on CPAN and write a program that shows me you know how it works.

If a person enjoys reinventing the wheel, they can do it on their own time, and more power to them. Making that a classroom assignment would be offensive to me.

use strict;
use warnings;

for (1..100) {
    print roman($_), "\n";
}

BEGIN {
    my %roman = ( 1 => 'I', 4 => 'IV', 5 => 'V', 9 => 'IX', 10 => 'X',
        40 => 'XL', 50 => 'L', 90 => 'XC', 100 => 'C', 400 => 'CD',
        500 => 'D', 900 => 'CM', 1000 => 'M' );
    my @roman = sort { $b <=> $a } keys %roman;

    sub roman {
        my ($n, $r) = $_[0];
        for (@roman) {
            next if $_ > $n;
            $r .= $roman{$_} x ($n / $_);
            $n = $n % $_;
        }
        return $r;
    }
}
[download]

use strict;
use warnings;

my $text = join '', <DATA>;
print wordwrap($text, 45);

sub wordwrap {
    my ($text, $width, $result) = @_;
    for (split /\n/, $text) {
        while (length($_) > $width) {
            s/^(.{1,$width})\s+//;
            $result .= "$1\n";          
        }
        $result .= "$_\n";
    }
    return $result;
}

__DATA__
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one peopl
+e to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with anot
+her, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and eq
+ual station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle t
+hem, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they s
+hould declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
[download]

I'd suggest regular expressions for this -- look at what's common on all the chapters of interest. Regular expressions will also likely be helpful in other parts of your task . . .

And, you should look at printf/sprintf.

Good luck!

use strict;
use warnings;

my $heading = "NIMBLE CATS FALL SAFELY";
my $width = 80;

print '-' x $width, "\n";
print center($heading, $width), "\n";
print '-' x $width, "\n";

sub center {
    my ($heading, $width) = @_;
    return ' ' x (($width - length($heading)) / 2) . $heading;
}
[download]

Learning Perl will get you up to speed on what you need in no time. (Rhyme unintentional but I'll take it.)

I'd recommend any of the resources here. Also, don't forget PM's Tutorials... :-)

HTH,

planetscape