Look at the functions for array manipulation: shift, pop, unshift and push - and splice.

You might want to iterate over the file while reading, instead of loading it into memory as a whole. Then the next keyword could be of interest to you:

my $first;
while (<FILE>) {
    s/\s+$//; # strip newline and whitespace from end of line
    if( ! $first++) {
        print "The first line is '$_'\n";
        next;
    };
    print "Some other line is '$_'\n";
};
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Hmm.. I couldn't get it to work, so I did a bit more on what I had, but now it prints out a certain line, by how many lines there are in total

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

open (FILE, '<', shift);
my @file = <FILE>;
close (FILE);
my $first = shift @file;

foreach my $line (@file) {
    chomp $line;
    for (my $i = 1; $i <= $first; $i++) {
        print "Line $i: $line\n";
    }
}
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Original content restored above by GrandFather

Ok sweet, I've got it to work your way, and I used the next and shift functions instead of giving a value through $line[0] :D

Most perl programmers would do this the way Corion indicated.

Your logic is incorrect - here is a version using a "for loop" that you seem to want - , but coded in a more idomatic manner:

use strict;
use warnings;

my $filename = shift;
open my $file, "<", Filename or die "Cannot open $filename: $!";
chomp (my $lastrecord = <$file>); # Reads in the first record

for (my $rec = 1; $rec <= $lastrecord and not eof($file); $rec++) {
     chomp(my $line = <$file>);
     print "Line $rec: $line\n";
};
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There is a small,subtle potential problem inherent in the code above - not corrected in order to maintain simplicity : the $line read in may be empty at EOF.

UPDATE:Please do not delete code/comments after posting them - it makes responses like mine look out of context. It also prevents others from learning because context disappears.

             All great truths begin as blasphemies.
                   ― George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950)

open (FILE, shift);
my @file = <FILE>;

foreach $a (@file) {
   ...etc...
}

close (FILE);
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my $name = shift or die "usage: $0 filename\n";
open FILE, '<', $name or die "Cannot open '$name' because: $!";
my ( $firstline, @file ) = <FILE>;
close FILE;

foreach my $line ( @file ) {
   ...etc...
}
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OR:

my $name = shift or die "usage: $0 filename\n";
open FILE, '<', $name or die "Cannot open '$name' because: $!";
my $firstline = <FILE>;

while ( my $line = <FILE> ) {
   ...etc...
}

close FILE;
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OR:

my $name = shift or die "usage: $0 filename\n";
open FILE, '<', $name or die "Cannot open '$name' because: $!";

my $firstline;
while ( my $line = <FILE> ) {
    if ( $. == 1 ) {
        $firstline = $line;
        next;
    }
   ...etc...
}

close FILE;
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