Uhh ... a few questions:

• Why are you rewriting what is presumably a perfectly good VB app? If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
• Have you actually learned Perl? Perl isn't VB rewritten as if cartoon characters were swearing. Perl's ancestry is actually very different from VB's ancestry, going back several language generations.
• Do you have a design document for this application? When I have rewritten apps from one language to another, especially from XYZ to Perl, I have found it simpler to start over rather than to "translate". Plus, you get better Perl code.

Your question is demonstrating a very keen misunderstanding of Perl. If I correctly understand what you're trying to do, you actually want the following Perl code:

if (my $part = Library::FindPart( $Recipe->{Placements}[0]{PlacementPa
+rt}{Part}{Name} ) )
{
    my $feedertype = $part->Value( "FEEDERWIDTH", 'Default value goes 
+here' );
    print "Feeder type: $feedertype\n";
}
[download]

Now, that code assumes you know a WHOLE bunchload of Perl idioms, data structures, object-oriented code, etc. Unless you really want to spend at least 3-6 months immersed deeply in Perl, I would strongly suggest you fix the bugs in your VB app and not use Perl.

---

---

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! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

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:
	&		&
	<		&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.