Since you're trying to match a leading substring, use a regular expression. 
  if ( $variable =~ /^read_community/ ) { ...

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should do it.

Note that there's one other problem in your code. 

  chomp;

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should be 
  chomp($variable);

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In reply to Re: Simple Problem getting me Stumped by dws
in thread Simple Problem getting me Stumped by CongoGrey

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