catfish1116 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I have a simple script but on the second input, the $name variable doesn't change and throws the while loop into an infinitive loop

  my %PhoneNum = (
     Carl => '111-1112',
     Dale => '333-3334',
     Ester => '555-5567',
     Frank => '777-6789',
     George => 999-0121
     );

  print "Please enter the name of the person whose phone number you wo
+uld like to look up: ";
  chomp(my $name = <STDIN>);
  while ($name ne 'q') {        
    if (exists $PhoneNum{$name}) {
       print "$name has the phone number: $PhoneNum{$name}\n";
    } else {
        print "$name is not in the phone book\n";
    }
    print "enter name or 'q' for quit: ";
    chomp(my $name = <STDIN>);
    print "\n\n\n My name is $name\n";
   }

[download]

TIA The Catfish

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: while loop not working
by choroba (Cardinal) on Dec 27, 2019 at 20:42 UTC
    You used my $name twice. It means the second $name is not the same as the first $name, it's a brand new variable whose value doesn't influence the value of the outer variable that's used to exit the loop.

    Just drop the "my" from the second assignment.

    map{substr$_->[0],$_->[1]||0,1}[\*||{},3],[[]],[ref qr-1,-,-1],[{}],[sub{}^*ARGV,3]
[reply]
[d/l]
      addendum: 'use warnings;' would have shown it.

        DB<27> use warnings; my $x;my$x
"my" variable $x masks earlier declaration in same scope at

      [download]

      Cheers Rolf
      (addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
      Wikisyntax for the Monastery FootballPerl is like chess, only without the dice

[reply]
[d/l]
        It wouldn't as the variables have a different scope: 
        perl -we 'my $x; while($x) { my $x }'

        [download]

        map{substr$_->[0],$_->[1]||0,1}[\*||{},3],[[]],[ref qr-1,-,-1],[{}],[sub{}^*ARGV,3]
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]

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