foreach my $filename( @files ){ my $file = "text_000".$variable."."."lab"; my $outfile = "$outdirname/"."$file"; open my $output , ">$outfile" || die "Can't open the output file!"; print "file: $file\n"; while ( my $line = <$filename> ) { $line =~ s/^\s+//; $line =~ s/ +/ /g; $line =~ s/\s+$/\n/g; print $output $line; } close ($output); $variable++; }