--- Brian R. Barbash wrote: I'm very new to programming in Mac Perl (or just plain old Perl for that matter), so please bear with me. I need to be able to create a file and place data in it from a variable. For example: print ("Enter the filename to save into:\n"); $filename = <STDIN>; chop ($filename); die ("Error: cannot open file $filename for writing.") unless open (Outputfile, ">$filename"); print Outputfile ("$data_to_go_into_file\n"); close (Outputfile); Since the file does not actually exist yet, the die command is executed. How do I create the file to write the information into? Thanks in advance for any help. --- end of quoted material --- the file should be created. your program works fine for me (in 5.06r1m) (i.e., it creates a file). what name are you entering? what directory are you in?