Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that you are experiencing problems with the encoding of the end of line in your html file. Is your html file written in dos/Windows?, i.e has '\r\n' at the end of each line?. Are you processing it in *nix ('\n'). That would explain why you are seeing those ^M characters in vim. If that is true, Tie::File is seeing the whole file as just one line, and inserting your $line at the end of that unique line

You can see how many lines Tie::File is seeing with print $#testarray

Try one of the following (not both!):

• Convert the html file to unix with dos2unix
• Tie the file specifying a different recsep: tie my @testarray,'Tie::File',recsep='\r\n' or die $!

Hope this helps