As a general thing don't declare variables until you have an initial value for them. The use of prev_l and prev_p is an exception to that guideline where the operation of the code requires the two variables to be declared outside the loop.

Nested blocks generally obfuscate code so try to avoid that. One powerful tool for reducing nesting is to use early exits. Look at the following code and see how next with if as a statement modifier is used to abort processing loop statements wherever there is no need to continue.

Note too the use of defined to handle the first line correctly.

#!/usr/bin/perl use warnings; use strict; my $prev_l; my $prev_p; while (my $line = <DATA>) { next if $line !~ /^[\d]/; chomp $line; my @hitline = split (/,/, $line); my $hitLength = $hitline[4]; my $prevalence = $hitline[65]; next if defined $prev_l && $hitLength == $prev_l && $prevalence == + $prev_p; print "$line\n"; $prev_l = $hitLength; $prev_p = $prevalence; } __DATA__ 23750,57495,78362,xxxx,2853,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1, +1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 +,1,1,1,1,60,100 23751,57497,78364,xxxx,2853,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1, +1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 +,1,1,1,1,60,100 23752,57500,78367,xxxx,3114,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1, +1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 +,1,1,1,1,60,100 23753,57502,78369,xxxx,3114,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1, +1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 +,1,1,1,1,60,100 23754,57504,78371,xxxx,101,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 +,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1, +1,1,1,1,60,100

Prints:

23750,57495,78362,xxxx,2853,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1, +1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 +,1,1,1,1,60,100 23752,57500,78367,xxxx,3114,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1, +1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 +,1,1,1,1,60,100 23754,57504,78371,xxxx,101,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 +,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1, +1,1,1,1,60,100
Premature optimization is the root of all job security

In reply to Re: How to Save a variable outside of a loop by GrandFather
in thread How to Save a variable outside of a loop by Calebros

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.