use strict; use warnings; sub retriver(); my @lines; my $lines_ref; my $count; $lines_ref=retriver(); @lines=@$lines_ref; $count=@lines; print "Count :$count\nLines\n"; print join "\n",@lines; sub retriver() { my $file='source_data\data.txt'; open FILE, $file or die "FILE $file NOT FOUND - $!\n"; my @contents=; my @filtered=grep(/abc:/,@contents); return \@filtered; }