if you stick with this solution, i'd use elsif instead of else if--it's proper perl. it's already been mentioned to cache the result from substr, so i'll leave that alone.

but i'd be inclined to use a hash rather than elseif. if you use subroutines for the work, it'll be easy to maintain your code when you need to do more than just print to a handle, because all the code's in one place. here's a fully working example:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
$|++;

sub do_something(*@)
{
  local *HANDLE = shift;
  print HANDLE @_;
}

# set up filehandles for this example
# you'll probably use open()...
local *B = *STDOUT;
local *T = *STDERR;

my %map_char_to_handle = (
  B => *B,
  T => *T,
  # etc.
);  

while(<DATA>)
{
  my $test_for_handle = substr($_, 2, 1);
  defined $map_char_to_handle{$test_for_handle} 
    and do_something($map_char_to_handle{$test_for_handle}, $_);
}

__DATA__
ABC123
CAB234
BTT456
BXC789

[download]

~Particle *accelerates*

In reply to Re^2: substring exists at particular postion? by particle
in thread substring exists at particular postion? by redemption

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.