That's because you can't copy and paste the entire thing as a .pl file and expect Perl to understand. Here's what you need to have as the contents of the .pl file:

#!/bin/perl
@type = (
    "Empty", "Run Lvl", "Boot", "New Time", "Old Time", "Init" +,
    "Login", "Normal",  "Term", "Account"
);
$recs = "";
while (<>) {
    $r ecs .= $_;
}
foreach ( split( /(.{384})/s, $recs ) ) {
    next if length($_) == 0 +;
    my ( $type, $pid, $line, $inittab, $user, $host, $t1, $t2, $t3, $t
+4, $t5 ) =
      $_ =~ /(.{4})(.{4})(.{32})(.{4})(.{32})(.{256})(.{4})(.{4})(.{4}
+)(.
+{4})(.{4})/s;
    if ( defined $line && $line =~ /\w/ ) {
        $line =~ s/\
x00+//g;
        $host =~ s/\x00+//g;
        $user =~ s/\x00+//g;
        printf(
            "%s %-8s %-12s 
+%10s %-45s \n",
            scalar( gmtime( unpack( "I4", $t3 ) ) ),
            $type[
              unpack( "
I4", $type )
            ],
            $user,
            $line,
            $host
        );
    }
}
printf "\n"
[download]

The next step after saving your .pl file is to make it executable using the chmod command. A chmod u+x,g+x,o+x wtmp.pl will do it. Then you can run the script like so:

./wtmp.pl
[download]

The above assumes that wtmp.pl is in your current directory.

Hi Sinistral Thank you for making the script mean something now! I renamed my file, changed the permission to 755, changed the file extension to .pl and when i did run the script I am still gettting syntax errors:

 syntax error at /usr/share/logwatch/scripts/services/my-report line 3
+, near "+,"
 syntax error at /usr/share/logwatch/scripts/services/my-report line 1
+1, near "+;"
 Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/(.{4})(.{4})(.{3
+2})(.{4})(.{32})(.{256})(.{4})(.{4})(.{4})(.
 +{ <-- HERE 4})(.{4})/ at /usr/share/logwatch/scripts/services/my-rep
+ort line 14.
[download]

sorry my bad. I removed the plus signs, now the script hangs when i run it...

Hi Sinistral Sorry, Im asking you alot of questions here. So anyways I corrected the "+" signs and it looks like this now:

#!/usr/bin/perl
@type = (
    "Empty", "Run Lvl", "Boot", "New Time", "Old Time", "Init",
    "Login", "Normal",  "Term", "Account"
);
$recs = "";
while (<>) {
    $recs .= $_;
}
foreach ( split( /(.{384})/s, $recs ) ) {
    next if length($_) == 0 ;
    my ( $type, $pid, $line, $inittab, $user, $host, $t1, $t2, $t3, $t
+4, $t5 ) =
      $_ =~ /(.{4})(.{4})(.{32})(.{4})(.{32})(.{256})(.{4})(.{4})(.{4}
+)(.{4})(.{4})/s;
    if ( defined $line && $line =~ /\w/ ) {
        $line =~ s/\
x00+//g;
        $host =~ s/\x00+//g;
        $user =~ s/\x00+//g;
        printf(
            "%s %-8s %-12s %10s %-45s \n",
            scalar( gmtime( unpack( "I4", $t3 ) ) ),
            $type[
              unpack( "
I4", $type )
            ],
            $user,
            $line,
            $host
        );
    }
}
printf "\n" < /var/log/wtmp
[download]

I added the wtmp directory so the script would call the logs from wtmp...but I am wrong again because the new error I see is this:

 --------------------- WTMP logs Begin ------------------------ 

 Warning: Use of "log" without parentheses is ambiguous at /usr/share/
+logwatch/scripts/services/my-report line 32.
 syntax error at /usr/share/logwatch/scripts/services/my-report line 3
+2, near "/var/log"
 Search pattern not terminated at /usr/share/logwatch/scripts/services
+/my-report line 32.
 
 ---------------------- WTMP logs End -------------------------
[download]

Thank you again for correcting the script, i'm really really grateful for that!

Helloooo again Sinistral!! OMG I finally got it to work!!! When I ran logwatch it gave me this error saying something like "logfile not defined" because as you can see I hadn't define a log file to call YET into the script (that's why the script was hanging!) Not very bright u see!! Soooo, anyways what I did was to go to my /etc/logwatch/conf/logfiles directory and added a wtmp.conf file and added this line into it:

my-mnag0:/etc/logwatch/conf/logfiles # ls -lrt
total 4
-rwxrwxr-x 1 root sysadm 61 Dec  1 15:11 wtmp.conf
my-mnag0:/etc/logwatch/conf/logfiles # more wtmp.conf
#Define log file group for wtmp log

Logfile = /var/log/wtmp
[download]

so then i rerun logwatch again and lo and behold!!! out came the wtmp logs!!!!

 Wed Nov 30 14:57:35 2011 Normal   my9849       pts/0 191.255         
+                      
 Wed Nov 30 14:58:11 2011 Normal   root         pts/1 191.255.        
+                       
 Wed Nov 30 15:04:17 2011 Term                  pts/0                 
+                              
 Wed Nov 30 15:04:25 2011 Normal   my9849       pts/0 191.255.        
+                     
 Wed Nov 30 15:22:33 2011 Term                  pts/0                 
+                              
 Wed Nov 30 15:23:51 2011 Term                  pts/1                 
+                              
 Thu Dec  1 06:09:22 2011 Normal   my9849       pts/0 191.255.        
+                     
 
 
 ---------------------- WTMP logs End -------------------------
[download]

OMG Im soo happy!!! This thing has been going on for 2 weeks and I was about to give up until you came along n responded to my distress call!! Thank you soo very much!!! *big hug and kissess