#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

open( NAMES, "<", "name.txt") or die $!;
my @list = <NAMES>;
close(NAMES);
print "list = @list\n";

for my $name (@list) {
    open(OUT, ">", $name) or die $!;
    print OUT "hello";
    close(OUT);
}
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1. use strict and use warnings;
2. use the "$!" so you get the explicit error when there is one
3. you didn't define $y - and it looks to be unnecessary for this
4. you didn't close the FILE handles
5. you need to specify the FILE handle you want to write to
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Update: Oops, forgot the .txt part - see madtoperl's node.

Hi Thank you for the response but gives mesg " invalid argument" at line 11

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

open (NAMES, "names.txt") or die "Failed to read names: $!";
while my $name (<NAMES>) {
  chomp $name;
  open(OUT, ">$name.txt") or die "Failed to write $name.txt: $!";
  print OUT " hellow";
  close OUT;
}
close NAMES;
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Absolutly correct - updated. That's what I get for switching to a named var from $_ :)

-- zigdon

Hi Gives the mesg " cannot open file for writing" invalid argument

Are you sure your have the required permissions to write to the file?

CountZero

"If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass compiler." - Conway's Law

Here's how I would re-write that code:

use strict;
use warnings;

open my $name_fh, '<', 'name.txt'
    or die "Couldn't open name.txt.\n$!";

my $y = 0;

while ( <$name_fh> ) {

    chomp;
    next unless $_; # Skip empty filenames.

    my $name = $_ . '.txt';

    open my $out_fh, '>', $name
        or die "Couldn't open $name for output:\n$!";

    print $out_fh "Hello\n";

    $y++;

    close $out_fh
        or die "Couldn't close output file $name.\n$!";
}

close $name_fh; # Don't need to check for errors closing input files.

print "Created $y files.\n";
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I've used lexical filehandles, avoided creating a list of filenames by simply dealing with the names one by one, checked for errors as needed. Note: I didn't validate the input. In other words, if your input file has garbage for filenames, you're going to get garbage filenames, or possibly illegal filenames. The only validation I've done is to skip empty filenames. Oh, and I also used strict and warnings as a best practice.