Cutting and pasting this code and calling get_section with your specifed parameters works for me. Of course, I had to comment out several lines since they refer to variables or subs that I don't have code for. My modified version looks like this:

get_section("E0209.dat","F0210.dat","H0211.dat");

sub get_section {
print join ':', @_ ;
        for (@_) {
print ;
                /\.dat/ && do {my $file = $_;
                               my $pubdate = substr ($_, 1, 4);
                               print "$file \:\: $pubdate\n" ;
                               } ;
        }
}
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As I said above, this works fine for me, and prints out all three values. The only thing that I can think of is that somewhere in get_file, sort_dat,or print_sect is a problem that's either hanging the script or exiting. You didn't indicate that there was anything abnormal about the execution, so I would look first at anything that might be causing the script to exit, such as a die;.

Of course, I could be way off in left field here, but it's a start.

Guildenstern
Negaterd character class uber alles!