I am just stating to work with filehandles. I built a script openany.pl have a file names.txt which is just a list of common names.
openany.pl
#!/usr/bin/perl
while ( $nm = <> );
open IN , "$nm" ;
while (<IN>) {
print ;
}
close IN;

When I type in ./openany names.txt nothing happens.
If I type in ./openany.pl and then hit enter, it goes to a new line and then I type in the file name - names.txt and the the program prints out the list of names.

What I am trying to get it to do, is accept the name of the file upon execution, example ./openany names.txt.

So what I want is to type in ./openany.pl names.txt at the command line then hit enter instead of typing ./openay.pl hit <enter> then type in names.txt then hit <enter>.


Probably pretty easy,

Read

looking there for ARGV.

Use

in your scripts.

Don't use file handles like IN - they are global.

Read

.

1. How to read command line arguments in to the program.
2. How to read file
3. Merger them up.

Always use , use strict and use warnings at the beginning of your script.

Oops!! It seems I repeated the same suggested by Sergei !!
Delay leads to duplication

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
my $nm = '';
$nm = <@ARGV>;
open NAM , "$nm";
while (<NAM>) {
print ;
}
close NAM;

thanks guys - I'll use the strict from now on.....

You do not need quotes in the item in red.