#! perl use strict; use warnings; use Tie::File; use constant { FIELD => 3, # Number of the field to extract from each record SEP => ',', # Separator for fields in each output file record }; my @infile_names = qw( file1.dat file2.dat ); my $outfile_name = 'exp3.dat'; open(my $in, '<', $infile_names[0]) or die "Cannot open file '$infile_names[0]' for reading: $!"; open(my $out, '>', $outfile_name) or die "Cannot open file '$outfile_name' for writing: $!"; <$in>; # Discard header print $out $infile_names[0], "\n"; while (my $line = <$in>) { my @fields = split /\s+/, $line; print $out $fields[FIELD], "\n"; } close $out or die "Cannot close file '$outfile_name': $!"; close $in or die "Cannot close file '$infile_names[0]': $!"; tie my @array, 'Tie::File', $outfile_name or die "Cannot tie file '$outfile_name': $!"; for my $file (@infile_names[1 .. $#infile_names]) { open(my $in, '<', $file) or die "Cannot open file '$file' for reading: $!"; <$in>; # Discard header $array[0] .= SEP . $file; while (my $line = <$in>) { my @fields = split /\s+/, $line; $array[$. - 1] .= SEP . $fields[FIELD]; } close $in or die "Cannot close file '$file': $!"; } untie @array;