stupid question

Stupid, no. Poorly formatted, probably. It looks like you only showed one line of your input. Did you really mean to show more than one line? If so, read Writeup Formatting Tips, then update your post, putting your input in code tags.

I am new to perl

Read perlintro. That should allow you to attempt to write your own code. Give it a try, and if you still have problems, post the code you tried.