To expand a little on what VinsWorldcom said, the structural element you have used in your sample is a here-doc. They are discussed in perlop in the Quote and Quote like Operators section. It is just another way of entering a string. If you want to get the contents of the file, you need to interact with the file system, either through open or by shelling out (e.g. using backticks `, see Quote Like Operators). The File::Copy module suggested uses open. Remember that while perl behaves like a shell in some respects, it is not a shell.