How do I assign a variable to the file content?

[NotProud]

I am trying to get a number from a text file and add one to it. Here is my code so far. Where does one go from here?

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
use strict;

print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";

$counttext = 'd:/xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/perl/thecounter/counttext.txt';
$thenumber;

open(COUNTTHIS, "< $counttext") or die "I can't open counttext: $!\n";
print (<COUNTTHIS>);
$thenumber = <COUNTTHIS>;  #I thought something like this, but no
print "$thenumber";
print "<br>";
$thenumber = ++$thenumber;
print "$thenumber";

Thank you!

Originally posted as a Categorized Question.