Thanks to all for their offerings, but I am yet joyless. I have tried the first four suggestions here...They work for you but not for me. Perhaps a tad more info might help our mutual enlightenment. Linux 2.4.3-20SMP (dual cpu), Mandrake 8.0, Perl 5.6.0 The file begins with 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use Getopt::Long;
use File::Path;

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and the var i$ is 
my($i);

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although I can reproduce the problem without i$ as in: 
print OUTFILE "\< \/HTML\>\n";
print OUTFILE "\<\/HTML\>\n";

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where the first case prints and the second doesn't. Manifestly, this should work as you have all suggested, examples abound. Any other suggestions? pax pogo

In reply to Re: Why do I need a space here? by pogo
in thread Why do I need a space here? by pogo

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