Thanks all, I'll change it, even if I don't like it as much. I can probably live with one or two more lines of code. I suppose there is a good reason for it throwing a warning at me.. *sigh* :)

It's good practice to never alter the control of a loop externally like that--it makes your subroutine very tightly coupled to that one specific usage, and in fact will blow things up if used differently. Functions should make it easier for you to reuse code in multiple contexts; it's one of their main reasons for existing. Most languages wouldn't even let you put a loop control variable in a sub like that (I know that's not entirely relevant, but just FYI) and Perl is reluctant to do so as well. Other people who may see your code in the future won't be expecting behavior like that.

I think the first reply's solution, using and, is an elegant alternative, and makes it possible to tell what is going on just by looking at the loop code.

My 2 cents!