A good way to start working on a problem like this, is to break it down into smaller sections.
Your problem seems to break down to this:
- get a list of filenames
- for each file in the list
- display the file contents
So think about writing subroutines that do each of these tasks. You already have something like a subroutine to display the contents of the file.
sub display_file_contents {
# filename is the first (and only argument) to the sub
my $filename = shift;
# Use lexical filehandl and three-arg open
open my $filehandle, '<', $filename or die $!;
# Shorter version of your code
print while <$filehandle>;
}
The next task is to get our list of files. You already have some of that too.
sub get_list_of_files {
print 'File name(s): ';
my $files = <STDIN>;
chomp $files;
# We might have more than one filename. Need to split input.
# Assume filenames are separated by whitespace
# (Might need to revisit that assumption - filenames can contain spaces!)
my @filenames = split /\s+/, $files;
return @filenames;
}
We can then put all of that together in the main program.
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
my @list_of_files = get_list_of_files();
foreach my $file (@list_of_files) {
display_file_contents($file);
}
By breaking the task down into smaller tasks, each one becomes easier to deal with. And you don't need to carry the complexity of the whole program in you head at one time.
p.s. But like JRFerguson says, taking the list of files as command line parameters would make this far simpler.