The code in question lives inside of a subroutine. I have included the full subroutine code as well as how it is called.

my $q        = new CGI;
my $email    = validate_email_address( $q->param( -name=>"email" ) );

sub validate_email_address {
    my $addr_to_check = shift;
    $addr_to_check =~ s/("(?:[^"\\]|\\.)*"|[^\t "]*)[ \t]*/$1/g;
    
    my $esc         = '\\\\';
    my $space       = '\040';
    my $ctrl        = '\000-\037';
    my $dot         = '\.';
    my $nonASCII    = '\x80-\xff';
    my $CRlist      = '\012\015';
    my $letter      = 'a-zA-Z';
    my $digit       = '\d';
    
    my $atom_char   = qq{ [^$space<>\@,;:".\\[\\]$esc$ctrl$nonASCII] }
+;
    my $atom        = qq{ $atom_char+ };
    my $byte        = qq{ (?: 1?$digit?$digit | 
                              2[0-4]$digit    | 
                              25[0-5]         ) };
    
    my $qtext       = qq{ [^$esc$nonASCII$CRlist"] };
    my $quoted_pair = qq{ $esc [^$nonASCII] };
    my $quoted_str  = qq{ " (?: $qtext | $quoted_pair )* " };
    
    my $word        = qq{ (?: $atom | $quoted_str ) };
    my $ip_address  = qq{ \\[ $byte (?: $dot $byte ){3} \\] };
    my $sub_domain  = qq{ [$letter$digit]
                          [$letter$digit-]{0,61} [$letter$digit]};
    my $top_level   = qq{ (?: $atom_char ){2,4} };
    my $domain_name = qq{ (?: $sub_domain $dot )+ $top_level };
    my $domain      = qq{ (?: $domain_name | $ip_address ) };
    my $local_part  = qq{ $word (?: $dot $word )* };
    my $address     = qq{ $local_part \@ $domain };
    
    return $addr_to_check =~ /^$address$/ox ? $addr_to_check : "";
}
[download]

I'm also having problems with passing the $q object reference about to other subroutines, but I think that's something for another SoPW...

Ok. We know that '', 0, and undef are all invalid e-mail addresses so just alter the validate_email_address sub as such:

sub validate_email_address {
    my $addr_to_check = shift or return "";
[download]

Hope this helps.

antirice    
The first rule of Perl club is - use Perl
The ith rule of Perl club is - follow rule i - 1 for i > 1