Resolution:

Below is the tested and working code (thanks guys!)

Note the newline chars (\n), those are required to tell Tie::File that these will be new lines and therefore new records in the array.

Even though i'm fooling with @array[$i + n] here, there's no chance of running off the end of the array because the test will fail negative before any action is taken on non-existant elements beyond the last record in the array.

The suggestions about HTML::Parser and so forth are well recieved, but since all i'm doing here is *generating* the html snippets, i don't think the Parser is really the right thing. 

### Update the main threads file
tie @threads, 'Tie::File', $main_threads_file or syslog('err', "update
+_threads couldn't open file: $main_threads_file");

if ($thread == $msg_id) {
    # put it right at the top, it's a new thread
    unshift @threads, $link;
} else {
    for my $i (0 .. $#threads) {
        if ($threads[$i] =~ $parent) {
            if ($threads[$i+1] eq "<ul type=\"disc\">") {
                # insert $link after the next element (after the <ul>)
                $threads[$i+1] .= "\n$link";
            }
            else {
                # insert three new lines/records after the parent
                $threads[$i] .= "\n<ul type=\"disc\">\n$link\n</ul>\n"
+;
            }
            last;
                
        }
    }
    
}
untie @threads;

[download]

Anyhow, thanks again for everyone's help! I hope this thread is useful to someone, someday.

Cheers!
914

In reply to Re: Conditonal insert into Array? (Tie::File) by u914
in thread Conditonal insert into Array? (Tie::File) by u914

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