in reply to Is this a correct way of obtaining input from a file?

The problem is in how you're assigning data to your variables in your while loop...
while (<DATAFILE>) { $TRACK = $_; chomp ($TRACK); $pager = $_; chomp ($pager); $service = $_; chomp ($service); }
Here you're assigning $_ to three different variables before you even read the next value from your file. This means that in each interation of your while loop (i.e. for each value in the file), you assign that line to each variable. Ultimately, the last line of the file gets assigned to all 3 variables, and you're left with the output you received.

What you actually wanted to do was skip the while loop and either do...

open (DATAFILE, $datafile) or die "Input data not found.\n"; chomp ($TRACK = <DATAFILE>); chomp ($pager = <DATAFILE>); chomp ($service = <DATAFILE>);
...or use DamnDirtyApe's version above, which I prefer. Just keep in mind that each time <DATAFILE> is accessed as a scalar, another line is read from the file, whereas each time $_ is accessed, you're simply retrieving the value of that variable (not the next value in the file).

-Bird

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Re: Re: Is this a correct way of obtaining input from a file?
by cecil36 (Pilgrim) on Aug 06, 2002 at 21:20 UTC
    I used DamnDirtyApe's suggestion and it worked like a charm in getting the input. However, when it comes to querying UPS's website with the tracking number, Lynx passes back a bad request, probably because there's an invalid character still attached to the tracking number. How can I strip any unwanted characters out after the string has been chomped?
      Nevermind the orignal post, Notepad stuck the character in the file when I generated it. vi in Cygwin fixed it.