I have a file, someFile, like this: $cat someFile hdisk1 active hdisk2 active I use this shell script to check: $cat a.sh #!/usr/bin/ksh for d in 1 2 do grep -q "hdisk$d" someFile && echo "$d : ok" done I am trying to convert it to Perl: $cat b.sh #!/usr/bin/ksh export d for d in 1 2 do cat someFile | perl -lane 'BEGIN{$d=$ENV{'d'};} print "$d: OK" if /hdisk$d\s+/' done I export the variable d in