use Tie::File; my $file = 'filename'; my @tied_file; my $idtag = 'idTag'; my $replacement = 'replacement line'; # Create the array @tied_file from $file tie(@tied_file, 'Tie::File', $file); # Preserve the index so we can work directly on lines of @tied_file foreach my $i (0 .. $#tied_file) { if ($tied_file[$i] =~ /$idtag/) { # Do something to this line of @tied_file $tied_file[$i] = $replacement; } } untie(@tied_file);