AlexanderTheGreat:

What part gives you trouble? If it's opening and reading the file, try reading perldoc -f open. It shows how to open the file, and a few paragraphs down gives an example skeleton of a program that opens a file and processes it line by line.

If you're having trouble with splitting up the line, you might try reading perldoc -f split to see how to use split to break the line apart. If the definition is always the first word in each line, you can use a regular expression like:

if (/^\s*(\w+)(.*)/) {
   my ($word, $definition) = ($1, $2);
   ...
}
[download]

Perl has *plenty* of documentation on working with regular expressions, such as:

• A tutorial: perldoc perlretut,
• Frequently-asked questions: perldoc perlfaq6, and
• The reference: perldoc perlre

There's more out there, as well.

If you're very new to perl, be sure to read perldoc perlintro to get a basic overview. In fact, if you read through perlintro, you'll probably have enough information to get through it.

...roboticus

When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like your thumb.