POSTIT.PL 

#!/usr/local/bin/perl 

my $nam = param ('name'); 
my $srn = param ('surname'); 
my $sex = param ('sex'); 
my $age = param ('age'); 

open (LOG, ">>messages.txt"); 
print LOG "$nam $srn $sex $age"; 
close LOG;
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#!/usr/bin/perl 

open (LOG, "<messages.txt") 
while (<LOG>) { 
chomp; 
my @attributes = split /\|/; 
for my $attribute (@attributes) { 
print $attribute, "\n"; # or do whatever here 
} 
} 
close LOG;
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I'll just assume you meant to post this under Reading data from a document.txt. You seperate your attributes with a space, and then try to get them back from the file splitting on a pipe character. Also you print all entries on the same line.

Try something like:

tr/|/ / for ($nam,$srn,$sex,$age);  # remove | characters
print LOG "$nam|$srn|$sex|$age\n";  # print seperated by |
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In your POSTIT.PL

And please, please, please, read How (Not) To Ask A Question or people might get upset with you.

-- 
Joost       downtime n. The period during which a system
            is error-free and immune from user input.
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1. Are you running these scripts on different machines? They show perl as being in different places.
2. Add a -w to your #! lines.
3. use strict;
4. Indenting your code makes it much easier to read.
5. You didn't tell us what you want to accomplish, so we can't help you do it.
6. You forgot to ask a question.

7. open LOG, '<messages.txt'or die "open failed: $!";
8. If this is from the book, get a different book!