I cannot figure out what the end result is you are aiming for (you lost me after "starting from the tenth column"). But if you want to cut out the first 9 columns of a file, use the cut utility. For instance (untested): 
use autodie;
open my $fh, "cut 1-9 -d ' ' $file1 $file2 $file3 $file4 |";
while (<$fh>) {
    my @columns = split ' ';
    ... Do something with 9 columns ...
}

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In reply to Re: Processing files column-wise by JavaFan
in thread Processing files column-wise by iangibson

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