perl script: Read and Write problem

I am trying to write a simple perl script which opens a file called file1.txt, reads the first 3 lines, and writes them to another file called output.txt

Can someone show me how to do this ? So far I have written the following:

#!/usr/bin/perl
# test.pl
use warnings;
use strict;

my $infile = "file1.txt";
my $outfile = "output.txt";

open FILE, $infile or die $!;

???

Code:

---

#open the out put file
open (OUTFILE, ">$outfile") or die "Couldn't open outfile: $!\n\n";

#for every line in the input file, write to the output file
while (<INFILE>) {
    print OUTFILE;
}

#don't forget to close the file handles
close (INFILE);
close (OUTFILE);

---

thanks josh

can i ask another question:

When I read my infile I want to ignore the first several records until I get to a record which reads BBH. I want to read all the records from BBH up until a record which reads PPH and store these values into variables.

Can you point me in the right direction please. Do I use a While Loop or Loop Until ?

How is your text file formatted? You can use regular expressions to look for and match the BBH or PPH. I think the type of loop to use is mostly a matter of the programmer's preference.

The file is formatted as follows:

AAH
BBH
SST
PTR
GGH
PPH

etc..

As Josh said, the loop you use is a matter of prefference. You can rewrite every loop in a different style. I tend to use for/foreach loops.

Code:

---

foreach $line (<INFILE>) {
  if (m/^BBH/) {
    #Do magic
  }
}

---

Mind you, it has been a few months since I did any Perl, so there may be gross syntax problems, but the idea is sound. Check the Camel book and the Cookbook. They are the holy tomes of Perl.