Update: Obviously, I was wrong and MeowChow was right.
Lesson learned: Do not rush to answer questions long after midnight - just go sleep. It is better to your health - and to your XP... : )
So my last late-night comment below is generally correct, but does not answer question asked above.

Original answer
You may want to open file DICT. Operator <STDIN> reads a line from filehandle STDIN, perl opens STDIN for you, but I guess your DICT is not opened yet.
Also, <> by default uses STDIN, so <> works, too. There was recently discussion about magical <STDIN>, try STDIN in Super Search.

Sorry I cannot help more, it's getting really late...:(

pmas

To make errors is human. But to make million errors per second, you need a computer.