I apologize, at the time of writing I thought it was clear. What is happening is I am looping through a list of files and I don't want to reprint the directory the files reside in for every single file. So I am trying to set $a to $b as $b changes and I am also setting $b to "" if it matches $a. 
foreach $file (@filelist) {
  ($dir, $name) = split '/', $file;
  $dir =~ s/$currentdir//;
  printf("%s  %s\n", $dir, $name);
  $currentdir !~ s/$dir/$dir/;
}

[download]
so I will hopefully get output like 
DIR1  FILE1
      FILE2
      FILE3
DIR2  FILE4

[download]

In reply to Re: Replace $a with $b if $a ne $b by Anonymous Monk
in thread Replace $a with $b if $a ne $b by Anonymous Monk

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