perl auth.pl 9 $argact = $ARGV[0]; open input,"one.txt"; open newfile,">output"; while(){ if($_ =~ /^Authentication\s+number\s+is/){ @array = split(" ",$_); $fileid = (split(" ",$_))[3]; if($fileid ne $argact){ $changeflag = 1; pop(@array); push(@array,$argact); $newline = join(" ",@array); print newfile "$newline\n"; }else{ print newfile "$_"; } }else{ print newfile "$_"; } }