#!/usr/local/perl5/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; use JSON::XS; use File::Slurp qw( read_file ); open(my $fh, '<', '/tmp/test') or die $!; # contains list of file names my @fields; my $uuts = {}; while(<$fh>) { chomp; next if !-e "/tmp/files/$_.json"; my $decoded = decode_json( read_file("/tmp/files/$_.json") ); push @fields, $decoded; } $uuts->{People} = [ @fields ]; my $coder = JSON::XS->new->ascii->pretty->allow_nonref; my $pretty_printed_unencoded = $coder->encode ($uuts); print $pretty_printed_unencoded;