What do you expect your code 
$a=1;
$b=2;

....
    while ($line = <INFILE>)    {
        chomp($line);   # contains $a, $b
        print "$line\n"; #prints "$a" "$b"

[download]
to do? Please provide a sample of the output you're trying to get.

It's not clear what you are trying to achieve. See I know what I mean. Why don't you?

If you read text to print it later, you print text. If you want to replace text (eg. "$a" with "1"), do so with s/\$a/1/ - see perlre.

If you want perl to evaluate the file, say so with eval, do or require. Evaluating a file whilst reading it linewise is tricky and outright impossible if those lines aren't self-contained perl statements (e.g. if the file contains control structures spanning several lines).

--shmem 

_($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo.  G°\        /
                              /\_¯/(q    /
----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}

In reply to Re: Making perl evaluate a variable with a string by shmem
in thread Making perl evaluate a variable with a string by moked

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.