You're missing something blatantly obvious. There is no semi-colon after the condition for an if. To rewrite your example, it should look like: 
while (1) 
{
    my @chars = ( "A" .. "Z", "a" .. "z", 0 .. 9, qw(! @ $ % ^ & *) );
    if ($usedpw ne m/$pw/)
    {
        print "Your unique password is: $pw\n";
    }
}

[download]
A few notes:
  1. You'll notice the indentation I used. This helps a ton when trying to read code with control structures (like loops, conditionals, etc.)
  2. Read Intro to Perl, aka the Llama book. You are trying to program without learning how to program. This will frustrate you to no end.
  3. Ask your teacher these questions, not us. :-)

------
We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

Don't go borrowing trouble. For programmers, this means Worry only about what you need to implement.

In reply to Re: While loops with if by dragonchild
in thread While loops with if by sulfericacid

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.