I can see a number of problems with your code ..

• The first time through the FILE2 loop, you'll read all of FILE1 and it will come up empty after that.
• You are reading all of FILE1 for each line of FILE2 -- that's not efficient.
• I would rename your array variables as array1 and array2 (corresponding, of course, to FILE1 and FILE2)

Second to last, I would reformat the code as:

open(FILE1, "$file1") || die "can't open file";
open(FILE2, "$file2") || die "can't open file";

while (<FILE2>)
{
  chomp;
  @array2= split;
  while(<FILE1>)
  {
    chomp;
    @array1 = split;
  }

  if ($array1[0] eq $array2[0]) 
  {
    print "match\n";
    if ($array1[1] == $array[2])
    {
      print $array[1];
    }
    else
    {
      print " no match";
    }
  }
}
[download]

Finally, check out the other good responses to the original question .. your approach should be abandoned.

--t. alex
but my friends call me T.

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