If I just print to STDOUT it ALWAYS looks correct
Then why not just print to STDOUT?

You may just want to simplify your script. 
...
while(<>) {
    # do stuff
    print $whatever;
}

[download]
Then you could simply run the script like so ... 
$ myscript < inputfile > outputfile

[download]

In reply to Re: file updating question by rbc
in thread file updating question by smackdab

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