First rule of fixing broken perl code. Apply 'use strict;' and 'use warnings;'. This gives a lot of warnings and errors with your code, which would warrant sorting first.

It looks like you're doing a fairly substantial number of slightly horrible things. I would imagine that if you did use strict and warnings, your problem would vanish (or become obvious. For starters - populating an array by setting $n.

my @jobvar_list = ( "senior", "exec" );
[download]

Will do exactly the same thing. Even better, you could use a hash, so you never needed to iterate through one list, and reference another list.

my %jobvar_list = ( 'senior' => 'Senior',
                       'exec' => 'Exec' ); 

my $quick_jobtype = "exec";
foreach my $temp_jobvar ( keys %jobvar_list )
{
  print "$temp_jobvar, $jobvar_list{$temp_jobvar}\n";
  if ( $temp_jobvar eq $quick_jobtype )
  { 
    print "$temp_jobvar matches $quick_jobtype";
    my $sortby = " WHERE jobtype like '%$jobvar%' and active='yes' AND
+ jobstatus!='suspend' ORDER BY dateadded DESC, jobtitle ASC";
    print $sortby;
  }
}
[download]

I think it must be that 'if' clause that's causing you problems - what is it trying to do? It sounds like it's evaluating but never working, and therefore not running that 'sortby' and 'Build_Lists_Both' segments of code. Which is odd, because it seems to be doing so in that sample code you posted. Is there any chance that you've tidied your code up a bit, with the job title list? that 'eq' line means that the two variables have to match precisely - no whitespace or linefeeds. Because your code _does_ run as is.

Monks, Thanks so much! I didn't write this code originally, but edited it to fit what I needed, but I'm an amateur. Thanks for all the suggestions (most of which are above my head). Preceptor solved it for me with this: "that 'eq' line means that the two variables have to match precisely - no whitespace or linefeeds. " I changed it to:

if (($quick_jobtype && ($quick_jobtype =~ /$temp_jobvar/)) || (!$quick
+_jobtype)) {
[download]

and IT WORKS! Once again the Monks have saved me. Thanks.

As you're maintaining the code, a rewrite is probably a good idea - there really is nothing like code that's not quite correct to give you all manner of headaches down the line (despite working now)

You are not initialising the arrays correctly

my @jobvar_list=qw/senior exec/;
my @jobname_list=( " Senior", " Executive" );
my $n = @jobname_list; # length
[download]

my %jobs = (
   'senior' => ' Senior',
   'exec' => ' Executive'
   );

my $quick_build='listing';
my $quick_jobtype='exec';
  
print "job types...<br>\n";
foreach my $key (keys %jobs) {
    print "$key, $quick_jobtype...<br>\n";
    my $jobvar = $key;
    my $jobname = $jobs{$key};

    if (($quick_jobtype && ($quick_jobtype eq $jobvar)) || (!$quick_jo
+btype)) {
        $groupfile = $jobvar;
        $grouptitle = $jobname;

        # heredocs are quite good for SQL...

        $sortby = <<EOF;
WHERE jobtype LIKE '%$jobvar%' AND active='yes' AND jobstatus!='suspen
+d' 
ORDER BY dateadded DESC, jobtitle ASC
EOF
        print "$sortby";
        print "starting build lists<br>\n";
        my $building_cat = "yes";

        # I don't know what this function does
        # but pass parameters to it, don't use global variables.
        # e.g. Build_Lists_Both( $sortby, $building_cat, $groupfile ) 
+;
    } # end if ($cat1 eq $cat_db_var)

}    
    

} # end for ($st=1; $st<=$jobvar_list; $st++)
[download]

A few comments:

You should be using: use warnings; and use strict;, because they will reveal a lot of errors (e.g., Scalar value @jobvar_list[$n] better written as $jobvar_list[$n] at ...

I added these and made the necessary changes (including declaring everything with my ... and re ran it (after commenting out the subroutine that gets called) and it seems to work fine:

#!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my @jobvar_list  = ();
my @jobname_list = ();
my @jobnice_list = ();
my $n            = 0;
$jobvar_list[$n]  = "senior";
$jobname_list[$n] = " Senior";
$n++;
$jobvar_list[$n]  = "exec";
$jobname_list[$n] = " Executive";
$n++;

my $quick_build   = "listing";
my $quick_jobtype = "exec";

print "job types...<br>\n";
for ( my $st = 0 ; $st <= @jobvar_list - 1 ; $st++ ) {
    my $temp_jobvar = $jobvar_list[$st];

    print "$temp_jobvar, $quick_jobtype...<br>\n";

    if (   ( $quick_jobtype && ( $quick_jobtype eq $temp_jobvar ) )
        || ( !$quick_jobtype ) )
    {
        my $jobvar     = $temp_jobvar;
        my $jobname    = $jobname_list[$st];
        my $groupfile  = $jobvar;
        my $grouptitle = $jobname;
        my $sortby =
" WHERE jobtype like '%$jobvar%' and active='yes' AND jobstatus!='susp
+end' ORDER BY dateadded DESC, jobtitle ASC";
        print "$sortby";
        print "starting build lists<br>\n";
        my $building_cat = "yes";

        # &Build_Lists_Both;
    }    # end if ($cat1 eq $cat_db_var)
}    # end for ($st=1; $st<=$jobvar_list; $st++)

__END__

job types...<br>
senior, exec...<br>
exec, exec...<br>
 WHERE jobtype like '%exec%' and active='yes' AND jobstatus!='suspend'
+ ORDER BY dateadded DESC, jobtitle ASCstarting build lists<br>
[download]

Also, you can write your for loop in a more readable manner like this:

#OLD: for ( my $st = 0 ; $st <= @jobvar_list - 1 ; $st++ ) {
for my $st ( 0 .. $#jobvar_list ) {
[download]