Fendo:

You've already got some good answers, but in the spirit of "we've a plethora of ways to do it", you could simply compute the number of "=" signs that you want, and then build a list of them like this:

print defined($count) ? ("=") x (10-$count)
                      : "Undefined count.\n";
[download]

Of course, if you calculate the number of "=" symbols you want, then you could also do it as:

print defined($count) ? substr("==========", $count) 
                      : "Undefined count.\n";
[download]

However, once you try it, you'll notice that your printing is off because you're sometimes putting in a "\n" and sometimes not. If you want to always put in the "\n", you could do it like:

print defined($count) ? ("=") x (10-$count) 
                      : "Undefined count.",
      "\n";

print defined($count) ? substr("==========", $count) 
                      : "Undefined count.",
      "\n";
[download]

You could crunch them up into a single line, too:

print defined($count) ? ("=") x (10-$count) : "Undefined count.", "\n"
+;
print defined($count) ? substr("==========", $count) : "Undefined coun
+t.", "\n";
[download]

but then it's easy to miss that there are two expressions generating arguments for the print statement and/or easy to confuse the boundary between them.

Sometimes, though, it just simplifies things overall to break things apart a bit. Most of the time, I'd simply do something like:

if (! defined $count) { print "Undefined count.\n" }
else                  { print substr("==========", $count) }
[download]

But I do see the natural desire to make the printing front-and-center rather than the conditional logic. I'll frequently do so when the logic is pretty basic:

print "You bought $qty item", $qty>1 ? "s" : "", " today!\n";
[download]

But when there's too much logic in formatting something to print, it's often better to do the decisioning earlier, then assemble the bits into your print statement:

my $item = $qty > 1 ? "items"
                    : "item";
my $num = num_to_text($qty);
my $when = "today";
$when = "yesterday" if $purchase_date == $yesterday;

print "You bought $num $item $when!\n";
[download]

Sigh ... I think I'll stop now, or I'll go off on another tangent...

...roboticus

When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like your thumb.