Here's a simple example to open the file and print out the records. When you understand this, you can begin to manipulate the records before printing.

use strict;
use warnings;
my $file = "t.txt";
$/="\n\n";
open IN, "<", $file  or die "Unable to open $file: $!";
while(<IN>){
   print "=======\n",
         $_,
         "=======\n\n";
}
close IN;
[download]

Thank you hbm

Note hbm's use of strictures - always use strictures (use strict; use warnings;).

Also notice that hbm used the three parameter version of open and checked the result of the open by using very low precedence or rather than high precedence || which checks to see if the last parameter is true or not (not what you are wanting I suspect).

There are a couple of changes I'd make though. Use local to localize the effect of changing special variables ($/ in this case) and use a lexical file handle:

...
local $/="\n\n";
open my $inFile, "<", $file  or die "Unable to open $file: $!";
while(<$inFile>){
    ...
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Perl's payment curve coincides with its learning curve.